Title: Charades 2/24
Author: Magpie and Wolfling
Email: magpie@moracle.co.uk and wolfling@sympatico.ca
Show: Buffy
Rating: NC-17
Category: angst, hurt/comfort
Warnings: spoilers up to the end of Chosen
Pairings: Giles/Ethan
Series: Of Old Mystics, sequel to Sleight of Hand
Summary: Searching for meaning in the signs and symbols of life.

Author Notes: Many thanks to Mad Poetess and Wesleysgirl for betaing :) This is the third story in the Of Old Mystics series; previous stories in the series can be found
http://www.myarseisnotpansy.co.uk/piedm/mystics.html.

"That's it. Brush the little monster bald if you have to. I'm fed up with all my clothes looking like they're made from mohair." Ethan was perched on the arm of the sofa watching Giles groom Gwydion.

"If you steal a dog, you have to put up with a little dog hair," Giles told him, not looking up from his brushing of the puppy, who was trying to wriggle under the attention, despite the command Giles had given him to stay still.

"If you'd just use that special clothes-brush I got you--" Megan started. She was curled up in the opposite corner of the sofa with a book she was meant to be studying as part of her training.

"That's not a brush," Ethan told her. "It's a roll of Sellotape with a handle."

"It still would help get rid of the excess dog hair." Giles glanced up at his lover. "If you used it instead of frowning at it like it was going to attack you in your sleep."

Ethan folded his arms. "It will make my clothes sticky."

Megan had actually demonstrated the brush for them, so Giles realised Ethan had to know his statement was untrue. "You, love, are a clothing snob," he told him.

Ethan's eyebrow raised slightly. "This is hardly news, is it?"

Megan giggled and turned a page.

"Well, now you're a clothing snob with a dog. I suggest you get used to the hair." Finished with the grooming, Giles set the brush down and fed Gwydion one of the doggie treats he'd taken to carrying in his pocket.

Gwydion yapped a thank you, and apparently understanding he was being dismissed, scampered into the kitchen where he could be heard slurping from his water bowl. Giles opened his mouth to ask Megan how she was finding her study of Gleick's rather dull manual on medieval weaponry, when he felt a familiar prickle. Ethan was -- his lover's slightly abstracted expression the only other clue -- using magic.

Glancing at his lover, Giles opened up his magic sense to try and figure out exactly what Ethan was doing. Ethan seemed to be using magic on himself -- on his skin maybe. Ah, no. -- his clothing. Giles chuckled softly as he realised exactly what Ethan was up to.

"Not happy with the colour?" he asked dryly, as he nodded at the shirt that Ethan was tampering with.

Ethan's eyes focused again. "Just playing," he admitted with a grin. Tipping his head back, he called, "Giddy!" and the young dog trotted out of the kitchen carrying his favourite chew toy.

"Playing with what?" Megan asked, puzzled.

Ethan ran his hand over Gwydion's back a few times and then picked a single doghair from his palm. "With this," he answered Megan, putting the hair on the front of his shirt. It fell straight off. "And now Rupert is going to make grumbling noises about using magic for self-indulgent reasons."

"I will if that little alteration does the same thing to the hair that's still attached to my dog." Gwydion, seeming to know that he was being talked about, went over to Giles and offered him the chew toy. "Thank you," Giles told him politely as he took the toy; Gwydion watched him with big eyes until Giles threw it for the dog to chase.

As the dog crashed about the living room, Ethan slid from the arm of the sofa onto the seat properly. "I'm bored," he announced, sounding for all the world like a teenager beset with ennui. "Can't we start the meeting early?"

"I could throw something for you to chase," Giles offered straight-faced.

Ethan gave him a twisted smirk in reply, and in his head, Giles heard, 'Think you can throw it all the way to the bedroom?'

Giles looked at his lover from under a raised eyebrow. 'You can't be wanting more already after this morning,' he thought back.

'Can't I?' Ethan's expression said very much that he could be. He pouted. "Oh, chuck us the Saturday supplement."

'You are positively insatiable,' Giles sent him affectionately, as he leaned over and got the paper to toss to Ethan.

Megan was watching them both suspiciously, perhaps guessing that she was missing half the conversation. As Ethan loudly opened the tabloid section of the Guardian, she said, "Do you want me to take Giddy for a walk?"

"No!" Ethan said immediately and quite fiercely, moderating his tone to say, "Sorry. We were being rude. You stay right there."

"I'll take him later," Giles told her. Then, realising how that could be interpreted, quickly added, "Gwydion, I mean. For a walk."

Ethan sniggered and raised the paper, hiding behind it.

"Not on your own," Megan said, a little tentatively. "One of us should go with you."

Giles repressed a sigh; it seemed that Ethan had passed his over-protectiveness on to their Slayer. "I am perfectly capable of going for a walk on my own."

"Perfectly capable of dying on your own too," Ethan said from behind the paper. "We agreed that neither of us should go out alone, didn't we? Especially you with your dodgy leg."

"It's been a month now -- I've been walking without a cane for over a week," Giles pointed out, trying to remain logical. "You're going to have to accept eventually that my leg is healed."

"I still see a limp," Ethan insisted, emerging from behind the paper and frowning at Giles. "And anyway, that's not the point. Which is the small matter of how you got the bad leg in the first place."

After a month of having constant guarding whenever he stepped outside the door, Giles was beginning to chafe a little under the lack of privacy and autonomy. "I think I can manage to look after myself walking around the block with Gwydion," he said, in short, clipped words.

"No." One word, fiercely spoken. Ethan's expression was on the verge of upset.

Sometimes his lover's mercurial emotions were... wearing. "Yes," Giles countered, feeling his own temper start to fray at the edges. "A short walk in the night air alone with my thoughts is not going to cause the universe to end."

Ethan threw the paper down on the table, making Megan jump. He stood up. "Any bit of it that rotates around me will end soon enough. When you get yourself killed. Just can't wait to leave me again, can you?" He headed for the stairs.

Megan looked worriedly between the two of them. "Um...?"

Giles let out a breath, trying to get his exasperation under control. "I had to fall in love with a drama queen," he muttered to himself. As Ethan disappeared up the stairs, Giles turned back to Megan. "You might as well take Gwydion for the walk," he told her, as he got to his feet and moved to follow his irritating lover. "I doubt I'm going to be free to do it myself any time soon."

"Ok," she agreed uncertainly. "I'll be back for the meeting. I, um, hope everything's..." Her voice faded into nothing as she headed for the coats closet.

"It'll be all right," Giles paused to reassure her, although he couldn't come up with anything else to say in regards to this disagreement. That would have to do for now, he thought, as he headed up the stairs.

***

Ethan heard Rupert following him up the stairs, so instead of lying down on the bed and indulging in some satisfying if infantile pillow hugging, he went to the bedroom window and stared out onto the street. His fingers played around the edges of the hole he had burnt in one curtain the morning that his magic had first come back to him.

He didn't speak as he heard Rupert enter the room behind him.

Rupert stopped just inside the doorway. "A walk around the block is not leaving you."

It could be. It might as well be. Ethan didn't say either thing, just carried on staring through the glass. He heard the front door close beneath him and watched Megan and Gwydion set off on a walk.

He heard Rupert sigh, the sound holding a world of exasperation to it. "And for the record, let's remember I wasn't the last one to try and leave."

That hurt. Ethan whirled around. "You... you git! That wasn't... You..." He was suddenly trembling. He couldn't believe Rupert had just said that.

"It wasn't me," Rupert agreed, crossing his arms over his chest as he moved further into the room. His voice softened as he continued, "And it wasn't you either. I know that. But it still hurt as if it was."

"And so you want to pay me back for that? Is that it?" For all that Ethan registered the gentler tone and however much he just wanted to be held and comforted, he couldn't seem to drop the issue. "You want me to feel how you felt. I see. Apparently twenty-five years without you wasn't enough for me to really experience your afternoon's pain."

He saw the anger flash across his lover's face. "Do you really think I'd be so... petty?"

"You tell me. You're the one determined to get himself killed." Ethan took a deep breath, but it didn't help. "Go then. Get it over and done with." He turned back the window, desperately trying to swallow down emotions that were threatening to overwhelm him. "I'll be fine without you; I always was." That was probably the most preposterous lie he'd ever told.

"Bloody hell, Ethan! I'm just talking about a short walk! You're making a big deal out of--"

"Rupert, I saw you... melt. I felt it. Your body just unravelling like... How dare you--" Again he swallowed his emotions down. "You're right. It's not a big deal at all. What can I have been thinking? Have a nice walk."

Rupert swore angrily half under his breath, but he crossed the room and pulled Ethan into his arms. "Like I could after that," he said, sounding resigned.

Ethan struggled half-heartedly, but then surrendered, letting Rupert turn and move him as he would. He avoided his husband's eyes however. "I know you need quiet times, dearheart; really, I do. But can't you have them here? Megan and I can take the mutt out, maybe do some shopping, and you can have a few hours peace and quiet."

"It's more than just the need for privacy," Rupert said softly, his hands moving soothingly over Ethan's back. "Although that is a large part of it. But it's also the need to feel like I'm not in... prison. That I can come and go as I please. That I'm not a little child who can't be trusted out on his own."

Ethan felt hopeless. Rupert knew the situation, knew the dangers, but would still, it seemed, rather risk everything they had together than submit to some basic security measures. "Does that mean you're going to do it?" he asked bleakly. "Going to go out on your own?"

"Do we really want to give -- whoever or whatever it is that's out to get us -- the satisfaction of us living our lives and making our decisions in fear?"

"Does that mean 'yes'?"

"That means things can't continue as they are," Rupert said in a soft voice. He'd said those words to Ethan before more or less, who'd never forgotten them, however hard he'd tried. Ethan felt something contract tightly inside him, and for a second or two, he couldn't breathe.

He tried to free himself from Rupert's arms, but failed. "Would you let go of me, please?"

"No." Rupert tightened his embrace around Ethan. "Because whatever you might fear, I'm not leaving. I'm not letting you go."

Ethan's struggles became more violent. "No, you're merely playing fast and loose with your own life regardless of my feelings in the matter. Let me go."

"Of course your feelings matter to me, Ethan--"

Their eyes finally met. "Let. Me. Go." He spat each word out, glaring at Rupert.

Rupert looked at him for a long moment, then released him.

Pushing past Rupert, Ethan headed back downstairs again, intending to head to the study with several bottles of beer, but as he passed through the living room, someone knocked on the door. Brilliant. Perfect. Bloody Xander was always either stupidly early or ridiculously late.

Ethan slammed through into their little lobby intending to give the American a piece of his mind. He yanked the front door open... and stared down in complete horror at the sight before him.

Buffy Summers stared back at him.

There was another, taller girl there too, he dimly realised, but his attention was taken up with the Slayer. "Wrong house; try down the road," he said, "in the next county." And he tried to slam the door in her face.

Her arm shot out and stopped the action; it was as if the door had just hit a brick wall. "We're here to see Giles. Are you going to get him, or do I have to go through you to do it myself?"

That was it. That was the limit line, and he'd just walked over it. "Make yourself at home," Ethan said, pushing past the odious Slayer and into the street. "*Giles* can be found dotted about the house, but most notably in the chest freezer. Do have a nice day. That is the correct American phrase, isn't it?"

He stormed off down the street.

On his own.

Without his coat.

***

Unwilling to let things lie as they were, Giles only gave Ethan a moment or two before he headed down the stairs after him. What he found in the living room wasn't his lover, however, but two surprise visitors.

"Hi, Giles," Dawn said, with a cheesy and rather uneasy grin.

Buffy's arms were folded and a fierce expression on her face, but the ice cracked a little when Giles looked at her, and she smiled, albeit a little tightly. "Surprise."

"Buffy." He finished coming down the stairs and crossed over to where the two young women were standing. "Dawn. What are you...?"

They continued to stare at him for a few moments longer, then Buffy lifted her arms tentatively, inviting a hug. "Um, hi?"

That shook Giles out of his shock enough to step forward and hug her. "What are you doing here?"

"We thought you'd be a happy smiley Giles to see us?" Buffy offered, pulling back from the hug. The frown reappeared on her lips. "Instead, we got better acquainted with the door as it was slammed in our faces."

Dawn fidgeted nervously beside Giles, waiting impatiently perhaps for her own hug. "I'm going to Cambridge!" she announced.

"You are?" He pulled Dawn into a hug, even as his mind was wondering where Ethan had got to. "That's wonderful."

She hugged him a lot more enthusiastically than Buffy had. "I'm doing two term-y semester things on Phoenician and Mesopotamian iconographs among other languages. I'll be the youngest one there, but I'm not wigging. Much."

Dawn was training to be a Watcher through a new scheme Giles had introduced when he'd first accepted the Council headship. It meant that the majority of her training could take place without her having to leave home. Obviously, there were some exceptions, no matter how close to genius level was the girl's ability with linguistics.

"I can see we'll soon have a new expert to go to," Giles teased, surreptitiously looking around the room. Nope, no Ethan lurking in the corners, and he didn't think he was in the study either. "I know he must have let you in -- did you see where Ethan went?"

Buffy folded her arms again. "He left. After telling us you were in pieces in the freezer."

"Left--" Giles looked around the room and saw Ethan's coat still hanging on the rack by the door. "Bugger," he muttered, alarmed, and headed for the door himself before he'd even consciously made the decision.

Remembering his guests, he turned back even as he was grabbing his coat and putting it on. "Look, make yourselves comfortable; Megan should be back soon, and Xander and my assistant, Pamela, should be coming by for a meeting. I'll be back as soon as I can. I just have to..." He trailed off, gesturing at the door.

"I thought he wasn't evil anymore." Buffy said, clearly ready to go after Ethan herself.

"He's not," Giles said, taking Ethan's coat from its spot as well. "Just exasperating." And a little too good at running away, he thought, but didn't say.

The look Buffy gave him as he rushed out of the door was more than suggestive that she found Giles to be exasperating too. He couldn't deal with that now though. He had to deal with his bloody lover first, and Ethan's bloody instinct to run whenever things got difficult.

Luckily, the same inner sense of Ethan's location that had led Giles to him last time was working this time as well. Giles let it guide his steps, only keeping conscious control enough to make sure he didn't run into anything as he walked.

He couldn't exactly go as the crow flies, but this area of London had such an interwoven network of streets that he could be more or less direct. There weren't too many dead ends, and as it turned out, Ethan hadn't actually got that far. As Giles realised when he watched his lover hurry past the end of the narrow street he himself was walking up.

Ethan was bent over, his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

Putting on a burst of speed, Giles quickly caught up to him, dropping Ethan's coat over his shoulders before the other man had fully registered his presence. "I suppose I should be happy that you have at least *some* clothes on this time."

The look Ethan gave him was one of abject misery. He stopped walking and pulled the coat around himself, but after that first bleak glance, he didn't seem able to meet Giles' eyes, and he said nothing.

"So where are we going?" Giles asked, keeping his tone conversational.

Ethan glanced up, just a quick flicker of his eyes before directing them down again. "Devon?" he suggested with a sad little laugh. He started to struggle into the arms of his coat. "I suppose I was heading for the pub."

Well, the pub sounded more like Ethan was planning on coming home than had turning into a fox on the Heath. "We have alcohol back at home," he offered softly.

"*She's* there," Ethan pointed out in his most bitter of tones.

"That doesn't change anything." Giles willed the words to be true.

Ethan moved out of the way of a passing couple and therefore much closer to Giles, but still not touching. He was fastening his coat. "Of course it does," he muttered.

"How?"

"She hates me. You love her."

"I love you." It was, Giles thought, what should be the overriding fact in this situation.

Ethan finally looked up properly, seeming to have to drag his gaze up to meet Giles'. "I..." he said, but got no further. His eyes seemed to hold a multitude of pleas however.

Giles reached out and brushed his fingers against Ethan's. "If I promise not to walk the dog alone will you come home with me?"

For one awkward moment, Giles thought Ethan was going to burst into tears on the street, but then his lover smiled, albeit a little raggedly, and said, "For that I'd even brave a full Scoobies meeting." Needing more contact, Giles tugged gently on Ethan's hand, pulling him to him, and Ethan seemed to take that as permission or instruction, as he immediately wrapped his arms around Giles and hugged him tightly. "I'm sorry," he mumbled beside Giles' ear.

Giles sighed as he wrapped his arms around his lover in return. "So am I. It was... Well, it wasn't anything worth driving you away."

"I would have come back, probably a trifle drunk and insulting, but I wouldn't have stayed gone. I wasn't intending to go at all, it's just she was there and..." Ethan whimpered slightly. "I think I might need some, shall we say, meditation time before I can possibly be in the same room as her without upsetting you."

"Buffy being here doesn't change anything between us; you do know that, right?"

Ethan, rather ominously, didn't answer and just nuzzled needily against Giles.

People were giving them a variety of looks as they passed. It was true that the two of them were taking up a lot of the pavement. Giles moved off to the side, pulling Ethan with him. "What do you think is going to change?"

Ethan avoided the question. "Did you know she was coming?"

"No, of course not." He ran fingers through Ethan's hair idly as he frowned. "Do you really think I'd keep something like that from you? Do you think I could?"

Again his questions were ignored. "How long is she staying?"

"I didn't get that far. Had to come chasing after you. Are you planning on actually answering any of my questions or should I just save my breath?"

Ethan looked up at him, then frowned as he was pushed closer still to Giles by a rude passer-by. Giles felt the familiar prickle of his lover using magic, and then people seemed to start giving them a wider berth, and also the curious or annoyed stares they'd been garnering ceased to be directed their way.

"That's better," Ethan said, kissing the side of Giles' jaw. "And no, if I think about it rationally, I don't think you'd keep from me a prospective visit from your pseudo-daughter who would dearly love to slay me."

"Buffy's not going to slay you," Giles told him with as much patience as he could muster.

"She'd like to," Ethan insisted. "She'd just love to stab that hard phallic object she's so fond of straight into my chest."

"Only if you were a vampire. And even then, she wouldn't have much room to say or do anything, considering her own dating history." He kissed Ethan, trying to soothe this lather his lover was working himself into. "Besides, do you really think I'd let her touch you?"

"She will never accept me, and that will upset you. This isn't like Xander." Ethan ran his hands nervously over Giles; he could barely feel the touch through his thick coat.

"She's going to have to. You're non-negotiable." He frowned and tried to meet Ethan's eyes. "Is that what you're afraid of -- that she'll somehow be able to change my mind?"

Ethan stared fixedly at an area just below Giles' left shoulder. "You will see me, see *us*, through her eyes and be ashamed."

"Ethan." He waited until Ethan reluctantly looked up, then leaned in and kissed him slowly and thoroughly. "With everything we've been through to get to where we are, do you really think I'd let anyone make me ashamed of what we have?"

Ethan shook his head slowly. "My rational mind doesn't."

"But in your heart you still don't believe." It was frustrating; Giles didn't know what else he could do to make Ethan feel secure that he wasn't going anywhere, that he *wanted* to be here with him.

"I believe we're meant to be together; I've always believed that. But that didn't stop you..." Ethan sighed. "Look, I'm not trying to dredge up old grudges. Really. It's just sometimes I..." He bit his lip and looked beseechingly and somewhat exasperatedly at Giles.

"You think I'm going to leave?" Giles asked softly.

Ethan flinched at the words, but didn't deny them, not completely. "Rationally, I know we're bound. I know you can't comfortably leave. And I know you love me." He bent his head and raised his own hand to his mouth. Giles realised Ethan was sucking on his 'wedding' ring. "*That* I know with all of me."

Giles gently pulled Ethan's hand away from his mouth, bringing it up to his own to drop a soft kiss on the ring before moving to kiss Ethan's lips as lingeringly as he could. "I do love you. You're... there isn't a word to describe what you are to me. I can't leave. I don't want to -- I don't ever want to." Then talking more softly, he said, "Although knowing that you think I'm going to helps explains why *you* keep trying to."

Ethan frowned and opened his mouth to defend himself, or so it appeared. But after hesitating, all he said in the end was, "I'm a coward; always have been." He sounded defeated.

"You're not," Giles countered.

"Yes, I am. I'm just not afraid of very much. But when something does scare me, I... Well, the instinct does seem to be to run. Part of that 'survivor' trait you've expressed admiration for in the past, I imagine."

"You don't want to be hurt or rejected again," Giles said, speaking his thoughts as he tried to work through the tangle of emotions they were both feeling.

"Well, that's certainly an understated way of putting it, in much the same way as me saying 'I fancy you a little bit' would be." Ethan chuckled darkly.

"Is there anything I can do to help ease those fears?" He brushed the back of a hand against Ethan's cheek. "To help you stop wanting to run?"

Never one to miss an opportunity, Ethan managed a weak grin and said, "Taking your own safety seriously would help."

"I do need some time alone, much as I love you. But," Giles said before Ethan could protest, "I'm willing to work something out if you are."

Ethan met his eyes and with simple honesty said, "I would agree to pretty much anything to keep you safe and with me."

"Then stop running?" The plea was out before Giles could think about it. "When I say I need some alone time that's not the way I want to get it."

After nodding, Ethan kissed him softly before replying. "I promise not to run from you again while I remain in control of my own actions."

It was the best that Giles could hope for, and the phrasing actually made him more able to take Ethan at his word this time. "We can work all the rest out then."

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