Title: Charades 5/24
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.

There was a knock at the door of the small Council conference room, followed by Xander opening it and sticking his head through. "Research brigade reporting for duty!"

Ethan looked up from the head of the table and smiled. "You seem remarkably keen for research."

Dawn followed Xander inside the room and closed the door behind her. Ethan smiled gently at the girl, who he was doing his best to befriend, hoping it might help change her older sister's opinion of him.

"Blast from the past," Xander said, moving to sit down in the chair beside Ethan. He hefted the box he carried before putting it on the table. "We even brought the doughnuts."

"Oh, very nice," Ethan said, meaning it. He happily put down his pen and opened the box to choose one. "How are you today, Dawn?"

"This place is *huge*," she told him, her eyes wide. "It's like Buckingham Palace or something."

"Yeah, a step up from the Magic Box or the old school library," Xander agreed, grabbing a chocolate doughnut and taking a bite that put roughly half of it in his mouth at once. "Several steps up from a dining room table in a house full of teenage potentials," he mumbled with his mouth full.

"Tea and coffee on demand here too." Ethan grinned and bit into his remarkably sticky iced doughnut, enjoying it while the other two settled down. Then he wiped his hands carefully and handed each a print out of the prophecy and his notes so far. "Here you see my meagre progress."

"So we're looking for a bear," Xander said, speaking around the other half of his doughnut. "Did Giles tell you we were attacked by a bear once?"

"Er, no. Could it be relevant?"

"You haven't been involved in the extinction of any Indian tribes have you?"

Ethan stared at him. "Not and known it, no. Rupert *was*?"

Xander shook his head. "Nah. The vengeful Chumash spirit just decided to hold the battle in his living room."

Ethan found he was scratching his temple. He knew they should really be concentrating on the research, which through one thing or another was getting nowhere fast, despite close on a month since he'd first decided breaking open the cryptic prophecy was the key to success. But it was very hard to resist stories that concerned Rupert's past without him. "Rupert was holding an open house evening, perhaps?"

"An Indian spirit was released when digging a foundation for a new building at UC Sunnydale. -- and I'd like to add it could've been released by anyone, just because it was me... Anyway, this spirit was a little cranky about his people being exterminated and was out for revenge. Yours truly, because I was the lucky working stiff that accidentally freed him, came down with a whole bunch of icky diseases -- including syphilis."

Ethan raised an eyebrow and much, he thought, to his credit, managed not to giggle. Dawn, however, spluttered, then hid behind a page of notes. "I'm laughing at his face!" she exclaimed, pointing vaguely in the direction of Ethan.

"Charming." He attempted an urbane tone, but not giggling was becoming harder.

"Don't laugh," Xander told him with a stern look. "Buffy was determined to cook us all Thanksgiving dinner while fighting this thing, which made for some conversations that would've been surreal even if I hadn't been feverish. Eventually the spirit decided to go after the community's greatest warrior -- Buffy -- so there was this big battle in Giles' living room. Spirit turned into a bear, Buffy stabbed it with a mystical dagger, and poof! No more spirit. Or syphilis, I'm happy to say. Oh, and Spike was tied to a chair in the middle of the room during most of this. With arrows sticking out of him." He grinned. "This was what passed for a quiet Thanksgiving gathering in Sunnydale."

"Ah," Ethan nodded. "That quite puts my recent Thanksgiving adventure to shame, doesn't it?"

As a treat for Megan the week before, Ethan had locked himself into the kitchen and done his best to prepare a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner for his Slayer. Rupert had said Ethan's wages were going to be docked with the cost of the repairs, and Ethan still wasn't certain that his husband had been joking.

"Told you that it could've been worse, didn't I?" Xander grinned again and reached for another doughnut.

"Yes, you did. Whilst finding the spectacle of my panicked capers highly amusing, if I remember rightly. You are on my list." He gave Xander his best evil grin.

Dawn looked worried. While Ethan's attempts at bonding over the last twenty-four hours had been relatively successful, he had to assume her memories of him, for all that they were created artificially, were still mostly unpleasant. "You wouldn't really hurt Xander, would you?" she asked.

Xander snorted. "He's had his chance for that. Nah, he'll just try and make me dog-sit. Which is evil in and of itself."

"Or perhaps just do some research." Ethan chuckled. "Come on, Xander. Us improper Watchers have to be able to crack book spines better than the professionals if we want to make it in these hallowed halls. You mentioned the bear, so we'll concentrate on that line today. Look up all that is both supernatural and ursine. If the right book isn't here, we can send for it."

"I've got lots of experience with the actual looking things up in the books, but not so much with figuring which book to look things up in." Xander gestured toward Dawn and Ethan both. "I will defer to the bookworms in the room for that."

Bookworm? Ethan's allowed his lip to curl and put on an outrageous Spanish accent. "You insult me, signor. I will see you by the bridge at daybreak. Name your second."

Xander's mouth twitched. "Kat. If you kill me, she'll both pout at you *and* kick your ass."

"Oh, pouting. Now that's unfair," Ethan complained. He winked at Dawn, who was sharing her attention between the two men with a look half-amused and half-taken aback.

An intelligent girl, obviously, she seemed to decide that if this was the way things were, then she would be equally relaxed. Leaning back in her chair, she grinned cheekily. "I can see now why you guys've had this prophecy since October and done nothing with it."

"Hey, I've been in Devon for... days of that time," Xander protested, holding his hands up defensively.

Ethan had his excuses too, but he knew Dawn was right, and this procrastination was more serious than the child realised. Frowning, he passed a hefty volume to Xander. "There. Start with that. Make notes as we don't know at this stage what may be relevant."

Xander took the book and opened it with less enthusiasm than he'd been showing. "Yeah," he muttered. "Just like old times."

***

"Ashby de la Zouch? What kind of name is that for a place people live in? I mean, they do live there, right? What's a Zouch anyway and how can you be 'de la' it?" Buffy was amusing herself by reading the road atlas as she and Giles drove north from London.

"Do you really want me to give you the history of the place and its name?" Giles asked dryly, glancing away from the road long enough to look at her.

But she had already turned the page. "Maidenhead? You have a city called Maidenhead?"

He kept the answer to that one very short. "Yes."

He could feel her staring at him. "*Maidenhead*?"

"Yes."

She stopped starring and flicked over a few more pages. "So this place we're heading for -- what's it called? Virgin in the Grinch?"

"Virgin in the-" Giles repeated then cut himself off with a shake of the head. "There are times I am extremely grateful not to be inside your head." There was a sudden stillness from Buffy, silence too. He risked another glance over at her. "Buffy?"

"You're in his head though, aren't you?" she said quietly.

And the topic had managed to twist its way around to Ethan once again. Giles figured he should consider it progress that it had taken almost an hour for his lover to come up this time. "Does that bother you?" he asked carefully.

"It worries me," she replied frankly. "How can you be sure he's not trying to control you?"

He could argue about Ethan's trustworthiness, but Giles decided he would get further keeping this as much as possible about him. "Do you really think I'm that weak-willed? Or weak-minded?"

Buffy wasn't going to allow that, it seemed. "Hey!" she complained. "This isn't about you. Ethan... does things to people's minds. Even kick-ass Watchers." Well, at least she was keeping the tone light.

"So your theory is that Ethan has somehow... mind-whammied me, and Xander, and the Devon coven and everybody else he's come in contact with?"

She turned to him, and when he glanced her way he saw her look was challenging. "Hello? Band candy? Living Halloween costumes? You can't tell me he's not capable of it."

"Then why hasn't he done it to you?" Giles asked, trying to use logic and not just get angry and defensive on his lover's behalf.

"Maybe he is," she insisted, but without much heat. "Maybe it works slowly." Giles glanced over at her again, eyebrow raised in comment. "What?" she asked defensively.

"Don't you think you may be stretching it just a bit?" he asked mildly.

There was another mile or so's silence, followed by... "So during the next apocalypse, do I get to keep you busy while people try to kill Ethan?"

Giles swallowed his initial defensive reaction to the question; considering the past, the question wasn't that out of line. He let out his breath in a long sigh before admitting, "I probably deserved that. But no."

Buffy seemed to accept that. "It's funny," she said, almost wistfully. "He knew, you know."

"Spike?" Giles asked, speaking the name between them for the first time since Sunnydale.

"Yup. He told me you and Ethan were, um... some nasty British word that I can remember perfectly well but *really* don't wanna say to you."

He wasn't too surprised that Spike had figured it out; the vampire had always been astonishingly perceptive, no matter what front he had liked to project. "When was this?"

"The night before... the end. No one could sleep that night. We kept each other company. Just talking." Buffy was speaking calmly; she didn't sound upset as such, but there was an edge to her voice that Giles' ears, long accustomed to the nuances of his first Slayer, could pick up on. An edge that sounded to something fanciful inside him like the unshed tears he himself had carried since Buffy's death.

"You miss him," he said softly, not a question.

"He was around a long time," she replied matter-of-factly. "Of course, everyone's gone now; even Dawn's leading a jet-setting international lifestyle. "

Giles wondered if Buffy was feeling left behind, or if he was just projecting his own experiences onto her. "You could, too, you know," he told her. "If you wanted to. You can do or be anything you want, Buffy."

"Yes," she said succinctly and looked out of the side window.

"Are you happy?" Giles asked, acutely feeling the distance that seemed to have grown up between them since Buffy had come back from the dead that last time. The fact that he actually had to ask the question proved that distance was still there.

Without looking around, she answered, "I'm not sure I even know what that is."

Giles nodded; that he could completely understand. Each trauma and loss and apocalypse left its mark. After a while it could become difficult to rise above what they left behind. He'd been there, felt like that; there had been a time when he thought that was what he'd be feeling for the rest of his life. Then he'd got Ethan back and rediscovered the joy in living.

He wanted that for Buffy as well; he just didn't know how to help her get it.

***

Ethan's head rested heavily in his hand as he stared glumly at the open book he was perusing. The trouble was, even presuming the reference to the 'bear' was more literal than simply something big and fierce, there were still far too many supernatural ursine threats in both myth and known magic history that it could apply to.

So as with a crossword clue he was hopelessly stuck on, he'd moved onto another line without telling the other two. But if there was a lot to read concerning bears, it turned out there was even more to research about mazes.

"Any one want refreshments?" he asked hopefully, standing up so no one could pre-empt him in his attempt to escape, if only for a few minutes.

Xander looked at the long since emptied box of donuts. "Yeah, we seem to be low on the snacking supplies." He rubbed his one eye and pushed the book in front of him away. "Could use a break from squinting at old texts with funny words too."

"Wouldn't mind a soda," Dawn said, looking up with a shy smile.

He smiled warmly back at her. "Right then. Soda you shall have. What tickles *your* fancy today, Xander?"

"Being out of this room for a little while," Xander promptly responded. He stood up. "I'll go with you."

The best laid plans of mice and ex-Chaos mages seemed doomed to go awry. "Will you be all right on your own, Dawn?" Ethan asked. "There are people just outside."

She nodded. "I'm kinda enjoying this actually. Don't tell Buffy, but I miss the research we used to have to do all the time."

"Don't let Giles hear you say that or he'll be putting you to work now instead of after all that fancy schooling," Xander teased.

Dawn looked to Ethan's eyes as if she wouldn't mind that at all, but all she said was, "Can you get me some Cadbury's chocolate and a really freaky sandwich too, please?"

"What do you consider a freaky sandwich?" Xander asked. "I've seen what you eat."

"One of those really weird English ones with, like, coleslaw and peanut butter, or curried chicken and celery with mayo." She seemed very enthused by the idea.

Xander turned to Ethan. "Now you see why we never put her in charge of meals, even when we had a house full of potentials."

Ethan chuckled. "I promise we'll get you the 'freakiest' combination that we can persuade the sandwich bar man to create." Holding his arm out, he gestured to Xander to go before him, and they left the room.

"I wouldn't put it past her to have the prophecy all deciphered by the time we get back," Xander commented, looking back at the door as they started down the hall.

"Wouldn't complain," Ethan told him with a grin. "Research of the traditional kind has always made me... I don't know, long to run through streets and climb trees in the local park, perhaps. Studious is one thing I will never be."

"Yeah, me too. Which makes it even more mindboggling that the room I probably spent the most time in back in highschool was the library. And way too often with my nose in a book." Xander grinned. "Threatened my reputation as a slacker."

Ethan held open a fire door for Xander to pass through. "How did you become a 'scoobie' in the first place? And why are you called 'scoobies' anyhow? I've often wondered. Wouldn't that make Buffy a, um, big stupid dog not unlike the one we stole for Rupert?"

Xander grinned. "She's never actually come to that conclusion, and I'd appreciate it if you never mentioned it to her. The name came from the fact that we were the pesky kids. Y'know, from the end of the episodes where the bad guy always said, 'And I would've got away with it too, if not for you pesky kids.' That's us."

Ethan's smile was wry but genuine as they started down the stairs. "And I suppose I was the complaining 'bad guy', not that 'getting away with it' was ever my aim in any of my reprehensible Sunnydale activities."

"So it was all a cry for help?" Xander asked, half joking, but seeming also genuinely curious.

"Oh no." Ethan pursed his lips. "Attention maybe, from that one particular person. But help I didn't need. Or at least, I didn't think I did." A thought occurred. "Xander?" he started.

"Yeah?"

Ethan paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Did any of my... games hurt you personally in a significant way? I cared not one jot about consequences back then, but in hindsight I perhaps do."

Xander seemed to give it some thought before answering. "Not really. I mean, they could've, and if anything had happened to Will, or Buffy, or Giles, that would've hurt me too. The worst was when you changed Giles into a demon, and we didn't know what happened to him and thought he might be dead. And there was the guilt afterward that I didn't recognise him when he came to me for help."

Ethan nodded and looked down. It was pointless feeling guilty about old history... or maybe it was necessary; he wasn't sure. When he looked up at Xander again, all he said was, "I have no excuse." He turned and pushed open the door.

Xander shrugged as he followed Ethan outside. "Some of what you did actually ended up helping. I still have most of that soldier knowledge I got from your little Halloween game; it's proven useful sometimes."

"That's nice," Ethan replied blandly. He found he really didn't want to pursue the subject any longer.

He felt Xander's hand on his shoulder. "I don't hold the past against you."

It was good to know, but Ethan didn't feel like he could answer it without being facetious, even though he didn't really want to be. He stared down the wide avenue that the new Council offices were located in. "Shall we head to the column and then up to Neal's Yard? There's a perfectly serviceable sandwich bar down by Charing Cross, of course, but Neal's Yard will take longer." He winked at Xander.

Xander grinned back. "Neal's Yard sounds like the place to go."

***

"Almost there," Giles said, as they passed the sign welcoming them to Leighton Buzzard. They were the first words that either of them had spoken for the better part of an hour.

"So this is where she lives?" Buffy asked. "In a place called Leighton Buzzard? God, poor thing! Not only has she had to live with Slayer powers with no help for seven months, but she's had to do it in Leighton Buzzard."

"Leighton Buzzard is a perfectly respectable town."

"Yeah, that's just what you said about Trollop's End."

Giles frowned. "I said about what?"

"Strumpet's Bottom?" Buffy suggested hopefully. Giles just gave her his best stern look. She pouted. "You're no fun anymore. So, this girl -- what do we know about her?"

"She's a Slayer."

Buffy didn't take Giles' attempt at good-natured revenge with the humour with which it had been meant. "Right. Shut up, Buffy. None of your business. Got it." She went back to staring out the side window.

Giles sighed. "That wasn't what I meant." There was no reply, and they were approaching the town centre where he would need to concentrate if he weren't to get lost. But there was a car park coming up on the left; Giles signalled and turned in. He wasn't going to let this... distance grow any more if he could help it, and if that meant he had to be late for this appointment, then he'd be late.

"She lives in a parking lot?" Buffy asked, not sounding like she cared much. Her arms were folded.

"I think we should talk," Giles replied, turning to face his first Slayer.

She glanced uneasily at him. "This sounds horribly like one of *those* talks."

"They're not my most favourite of things either. But don't you think we need one?"

"Depends," she said. "Are you still my Watcher?"

That was the question, wasn't it? Giles thought of all the ways he could answer it before finally settling on one. "You're still my Slayer," he said quietly.

Was it just his imagination, or did her lower lip tremble slightly in a way he remembered from days when she, at least, had been more carefree? Buffy looked at Giles, and when she spoke, she spoke slowly, as if she were only just working it out for herself. "Ever since I became a Slayer, I've jonesed for a normal life. Now I've found one for myself, give or take a super-power or two."

Ah. Giles thought he was beginning to get an inkling of what might be bothering her. "And it's not what you expected?"

"*I'm* not what I expected."

The good old identity crisis; that took him back. But he asked the question needed to get Buffy to articulate it -- to herself as well as to him. "In what way?"

She did seem ready to talk. "I'm not normal. I'm never going to be normal. I'm... like someone acting a part. College girl. But I'm not really there. It's just a... a costume."

Buffy's words brought the last shared dream with Ethan to mind -- with the costume chest and the metaphor it had carried about searching for identity. "That's what college is for -- trying on costumes and seeing which is the one that fits best. And you can have more than one costume, and you can wear them at different points in your life or combine them together into something new." He smiled faintly, remembering removing Ethan's mask in the dream. "Alterations are allowed."

"Giles, you don't get it." She looked at him beseechingly. "There's nothing underneath the costume. I'm just a... store mannequin. Just another Buffybot."

"You're far more than that, Buffy," Giles told her. "But it's understandable that you feel that way. For the last eight years, your life has been first and foremost about being the Slayer. And now that's changed."

"Yeah. Now I'm no one at all."

Giles shook his head, denying that. "Nonsense. You're Dawn's sister, and Xander's and Willow's friend, and my..." He hesitated but finally let the word out, "child. And you're still a Slayer -- you're just not alone anymore."

She was fiddling with the clasp of her handbag, opening and closing it repeatedly. "I don't feel like I'm all those things. I mean, I know that there's a Buffy somewhere that's Dawn's sister and your... whatever. But that's not me. I'm not that Buffy. I just look like her."

"You are her. As long as you're breathing -- or even if you're not --" Giles managed to keep his voice from cracking at that phrase, "you'll always be those things."

"To you, maybe," she acknowledged, then grimaced at his expression. Sighing, she tried to explain. "Ever since the Master, I've been waiting to die again. I got all that stuff you thought I didn't about how Slayers all died young. Giles, I dreamed their deaths; I *knew* they were all just kids when they died. When I threw myself into Glory's vortex-y thing, it was... a relief. Finally, I could get this thing I'd been dreading over and done with. I could rest..."

Giles had suspected as much at the time, and certainly when the others had brought her back. He'd attempted shock therapy to help her then, throwing her in the deep end and forcing her to learn to swim alone. There had been some metaphorical near drowning, but in the end he had thought she had started to live instead of wishing for death again.

"They brought me back, and I did everything I had to do, and I did it well." She glanced at Giles then, a little challengingly, as if half-expecting him to disagree. "I wasn't really me. Sometimes I almost felt like 'me', like that girl. But she was dead and the almost-me feelings were... were like a ghost. But I *was* the Slayer, and I had a job to do. The job was like my gas and, um, road map and everything. But now I don't have the job, and I'm lost in the desert in a car that won't start and no clue where I'm supposed to be heading." The last jumbled metaphor had come out in an increasingly hurried rush.

Giles was quiet for a moment, but then offered, "You do realise that that is a completely normal emotion for someone your age -- Slayer or not?"

She stared at him a little sullenly. "So why's Willow all with the combo uber-witch and college girl happy meal? Why's Xander more together than I've ever known him now that he's Watcher-boy?"

"And neither of them have had crises of identity that they had to work through, of course."

Her face closed in. "Fine. There's nothing unusual about my issues. I'm just like every other twenty-something. Can we go and get that poor girl now?"

"I'm not dismissing what you're feeling, Buffy," Giles said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose where his glasses rested. "Far from it. I'm trying to tell you I understand -- that almost anyone would understand. And that it gets better."

She didn't answer; just stared blankly out of the window ahead.

Giles reached over and touched her shoulder briefly. "We'll talk some more later, see if we can help you figure out how to get you out of the desert."

"Normally when I'm in the desert I get to see scary make-up girl."

"Can you settle for middle-aged Watcher-guy?"

Her lips twitched slightly. "They don't make spirit guides like they used to."

***

Ethan's spirits sunk as he shut the conference door behind him and looked at the table -- where Xander was handing Dawn her banana, tuna and walnut baguette. They had brightened considerably while out in the bustle of Central London, but back in the repressive library atmosphere, they plummeted far deeper than could be explained by the prospect of more research.

Dawn and Xander chatted happily, but he didn't listen. He sat back down at the head of the table and started reading about mazes again without saying a word.

"--right, Ethan?" Xander saying his name broke into his thoughts and made him realise he hadn't been paying attention.

"Mmm?" he asked, without looking up. He was very aware of the pulse in his temple for some reason.

"Dawn doesn't believe me when I say that we stole Gwydion for Giles."

The mention of his husband, for all that it was Rupert's surname, caused a small pang of pain deep inside Ethan. Now what on earth was that about? "We didn't steal the mutt; Giddy insisted he had to come home with us. Quite different."

"I must've missed that part of the conversation," Xander said with a smile. "Either that or I don't speak dog fluently enough."

"The dog was marked as Rupert's property," Ethan said distractedly. "Just like--" He stopped himself in time; they wouldn't understand.

Thankfully, Xander smoothly picked up a reply. "Lucky thing for Giddy that Francesca isn't a witch; hate to think what she would've done to a puppy who has 'Property of Rupert Giles' tattooed on his aura or whatever."

"Does the dog's history relate somehow to our research here?" Ethan asked, frowning.

"Other than being one more weird thing that's happened lately?" Xander shrugged. "Not much. That we know of. Yet."

"Perhaps you could get on with the work at hand then?" he suggested, a little peevishly. Xander's cheerful chatter was started to get on his nerves.

A frown passed over Xander's features. "We have been. We are. A little puppy talk isn't knocking us off schedule or anything."

"Don't argue," Ethan snapped back. "Just do it." As he heard his sharp words echo in the room, he dropped his forehead into his hand and massaged his temples hard.

Startled silence followed his words, then he heard Xander say something too soft for him to make out. Chairs were pushed back and there were footsteps over to the door, which opened and shut. "You okay?" Xander asked softly.

Ethan glanced over at him, noticing that Dawn had indeed gone. "Sorry," he muttered rather sheepishly.

Xander's worried expression didn't change. "So what was that about? Snapping orders isn't your usual style."

"I have a bit of a headache," Ethan admitted. He also had a growing suspicion he knew why he had a headache, why in fact he was feeling increasingly anxious.

"Came on really sudden, huh? Yeah, I know how that is; I've been getting those kind of lightning fast headache attacks ever since... y'know." He gestured at his eye patch, then dug into his trouser pocket, pulling out a small tin of pills, which he offered to Ethan.

He thought about asking what they were, but then decided he didn't care and helped himself to a couple of the small white tablets, swallowing them down with the coffee they'd bought. "Thanks," he said, pushing the tin back. "Perhaps we've done enough research for today."

"We can take a break anyway," Xander agreed.

Sighing heavily, Ethan folded his arms over his notes and let his head rest upon them. "He's gone too far," he muttered.

"Who?" Xander paused for a half-second. "Giles?"

Ethan nodded without raising his head. "We're... bonded. He's stretching the bond too far."

"But Giles would feel it too, right? And he'd stop and turn around?"

With an unhappy look at Xander, Ethan straightened. "Rupert is rather too good at ignoring his instincts and inner feelings. He... He's got a job to do, and he'll do it."

"Yeah, he can be pretty single-minded when he puts his mind to it, can't he?" Xander watched Ethan worriedly. "But he'd stop if he knew he was doing something that was hurting you."

Ethan could see where Xander's mind was going; indeed he was himself very aware of his mobile in his jacket pocket with its quick-dial button straight to Rupert's. But, "I really don't think he'd appreciate another restriction on his freedom."

"He'd appreciate it even less if you keep this from him," Xander pointed out. "Besides, even if he's ignoring what he's feeling, doesn't mean he won't be feeling it too."

"You don't understand. He... we.... oh." It was very difficult to talk to Xander like this, about these things. Ethan resorted to cliché. "He's really been chafing at the bit recently. This could be the last straw." Nonetheless, he removed his phone from his pocket and stared at it.

Xander snorted. "I think where you're concerned, Giles has an endless supply of straws."

He wanted to argue, but had enough sense to realise that the doom and gloom he was feeling was almost certainly affecting his ability to judge such things; his level of anxiety was growing with every passing minute. Gritting his teeth, Ethan pressed the relevant two buttons on his mobile and held it to his ear.

It rang twice before it was answered, and his lover's voice barked a very irritated, "Giles," into the phone.

Cringing at Rupert's tone, Ethan did his best to keep his own voice light. "Ah. Bad time?"

"Ethan." Immediately Giles' tone softened. "No, not really. Just wrestling with traffic."

"Tell me you're on your way home. *Please*."

"What's wrong?"

Ethan hesitated before replying. "Don't you feel it?"

There was a brief silence, and Ethan could almost feel his lover taking inner stock. "Damn. And I was blaming my irritation on... other things."

Ethan opened his mouth to make a snide comment about Buffy, but remembered Xander was still in the room. "Where are you?" he asked instead. It was more important, after all.

"On our way back," came the welcomed reply. "If I can get us out of Leighton Buzzard -- bloody traffic."

"Oh God," Ethan almost wailed, as he realised what time of day it was. "You're going to be hours."

"Well, there's not much I can do about it," Giles replied, irritated. "This isn't Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, after all. Or even Deirdre's mini." Ethan heard him take a deep breath and let it out, and could picture him deliberately calming himself. "Sorry. That's..."

"That's all right," Ethan tried to soothe him. "I know what you're feeling. Please don't let it affect your driving."

Giles' voice had lowered when he next spoke, as if to keep others from overhearing. "I'd bloody well teleport back if I trusted Buffy to drive without getting lost. Or wrecking the car."

Ethan rubbed hard at his head with his free hand. "Um, did you find the girl's house without trouble?"

"Yes. But before you ask, she's not old enough to drive." Rupert sighed, the sound full of weariness. "Afraid I'm stuck with chauffeuring duties."

"She's with you then. I did think she would be. Her parents sounded positively relieved at the idea of her attending a boarding school. Do you have the headache, dearheart?"

"Yes, but I didn't connect it with..." He heard the humour in Rupert's voice. "This job regularly gives me headaches."

"Perhaps next time, I should come with you," Ethan suggested gently.

"We certainly will have to re-evaluate," Rupert agreed.

"Yes." Ethan found he was extremely unwilling to end the call; he cast about for a subject that they could discuss in front of witnesses. "What do you fancy for tea tonight? I was thinking a mixed grill could go down a treat."

Rupert chuckled. "We have become domesticated, haven't-- Fuck!" Rupert didn't say anything else, although Ethan heard exclamations of alarm from the girls and other loud noises that did not sound at all good.

"Rupert? Rupert!" Suddenly fighting with rising fear, Ethan stood, his eyes not really focusing on anything in his immediate environment, although he was aware that Xander was coming closer. "God, talk to me!" And in his mind, he screamed his husband's name.

The room he was in disappeared momentarily, and he saw instead the back of a lorry heading straight for him -- for Rupert -- and felt his husband yanking on the wheel to swerve around it. That was all he got; it was enough to send him reeling to his knees nonetheless. He pressed the phone to his ear as if it were an oxygen mask to his mouth. "Rupert." The word was almost a whisper.

It seemed to take forever, but in reality was probably only a few seconds before Rupert responded, "It's all right; we're all right."

Ethan only then realised he'd been holding his breath, as he gasped in air to speak. "What...?"

"Bloody lorry driver cut me off." Rupert sounded mostly irritated, but underneath that there was a hint of the shakiness that Ethan was feeling. "Almost ploughed right into the back of him. Fucking pillock, thinks he owns the road." The amount of swearing Rupert was doing -- in front of Buffy and the new girl -- was a hint about how disturbed he actually was.

"Are you stationary now?" Ethan demanded worriedly. "Are you still driving?"

"Pulled over to the side."

He began to release the tension from his body. Realising that Xander had a concerned arm around him, he let the lad help him to his feet. "Rupert, promise me you'll meditate before driving any further. *Promise* me."

"I'm fine, Ethan. Really." He was already sounding more like himself.

"Promise me!"

"This isn't a place we can sit very long, but," Rupert's voice softened, "I'll do what I can, love. I promise."

"Thank you." Realising how shaky he was, he sat down on his chair. "I saw, you know. Briefly, I was in the car with you. I saw the lorry."

"I thought I'd felt something, but," Rupert laughed a bit shakily, "I was a tad busy at the time."

"Christ. Please drive safely the rest of the way. I'll bugger off. Don't worry about me; just concentrate on safe driving." Ethan was calming down enough to pay a little more attention to his surroundings. He gave Xander what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"We'll be fine, I promise. This must have been the universe's way of paying me back about that comment about Buffy's driving."

In the background, Ethan heard Buffy asking, "What comment?"

Struck by an idea, Ethan asked, "May I speak to Buffy a moment?"

There was a pause and then Buffy's supremely suspicious voice came on the line. "Hello?"

"Hello, Buffy," he said as calmly as possible. "Can we, for the sake of Rupert's, and indeed *your* safety, put aside our differences for the duration of this call?"

"Hey, you don't start anything, I won't start anything. What do you want?"

Stripping his voice of all tone beyond basic expression, he told her the facts. "Rupert is undergoing something he doesn't fully understand. Before you set off on your way again, he has to meditate a moment or two; it's essential. While he is driving, he shouldn't be distracted. If you have any across-the-counter painkillers, make him take some. Watch him carefully..." Ethan paused. "And don't tell him about what I'm asking you to do, as that will piss him off when he needs to remain calm. Just, um, pretend I'm asking you if he's really unhurt." He could only hope she'd have the sense to obey.

There was a long pause, and Ethan could imagine her wanting to ask all sorts of questions, but when she finally did speak it was only to say, "Yeah, he's fine. If showing off a potty mouth he's managed to keep mostly hidden up to now."

"Thank you, Buffy. I, um, owe you one." His fingers twitched as he said it; the words felt wrong somehow on his tongue.

"I'll keep an eye on him," she promised, sounding less confrontational than she ever had when addressing him before.

"Thank you," he repeated quietly. "I won't talk to him again; he needs to meditate. Safe journey." He ended the call.

Xander was looking at him, practically vibrating. "What happened?" he demanded.

"He nearly ploughed into the back of a lorry that cut him off," Ethan said glumly, rubbing his eyes and trying to calm down.

"Fuck." Xander sat back down beside him. "Everyone's okay though?"

Nodding, Ethan found his now cold coffee and swigged down a mouthful. Really alcohol would be more helpful than caffeine currently. "Buffy's going to watch him for me."

Xander laughed, the noise not sounding completely normal. "Guess that answers the question 'who watches the Watcher', huh."

Ethan looked at him. "I'm, er, sorry if I alarmed you. The bond has strange and growing side effects."

"Yeah. Just can't get away from the strange."

"Xander, I..." Ethan sighed into his hands before letting them drop and standing up. "I'm going to sit in his office until he gets back."

"All right." Xander watched him with a worried eye. "Do you need... Giles has Buffy watching him; do you need someone to watch you?"

He shook his head slightly. "No. I really need -- what is it American parents say? Alone time?" He began to collect papers and books together.

Xander frowned, but nodded. "If something's going to happen, like you fainting or something, you buzz Pamela or call me though, okay?" He stood and moved to fall into step with Ethan. "And I'm going to make sure you get to Giles' office without running into Lorries or Richards or anything."

Ethan knew he was feeling distracted and muddle-headed, but still. "Richards? You presumably don't mean the boutique."

"Huh?"

"To which I can only say, a hearty 'me too'."

Xander shook his head as they started for the door. "This is disturbingly like having a conversation with me if I was someone else."

Ethan held the door open. "Well, it feels exactly like having a conversation with you to me."

"That's my point," Xander said, stepping through and waiting for Ethan to do the same. "Except on both sides."

They set off down the corridor. "I certainly hope you're not implying that my urbane and ironic wit is similar somehow to your crude American eccentricity."

"Well, I would've used different words..."

The conversation was proving pleasantly diverting, and it had just presented him with an opportunity to use one of his favourite quotations. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. And *that*, my dear Xander, is irony."

"That, my dear Ethan, is wordy." Xander grinned and then admitted, "The scary thing is that where I grew up, that wouldn't have been a metaphor."

"I suppose not," Ethan agreed, not really thinking about his words. Diverting or not, it was hard to encourage the conversation further when his mind was quite so determined to fret about Rupert. Having to rely on Buffy to watch over his husband wasn't a great deal of comfort either, although Ethan knew, if nothing else, the Slayer would take her task seriously.

He said nothing much after that until, outside Rupert's offices, he asked, "When Rupert does get back here, he'll have the new girl with him. Are you likely to be about still?"

"Should be, 'less Dawn wants to go back to the hotel. But since I told her where the library was, I doubt that's going to happen for several days."

"If you are around, um... well, I doubt Rupert will be in a fit state to give her the tour."

Xander nodded. "No problem. Just have Pamela page me when they get here."

Ethan gave Xander a quick smile and an equally quick clasp of the shoulder, before heading through the door.

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