TITLE: SPECTRES
AUTHOR: Jaydn Michelle.
RATING: R - or M (depending on which hemisphere you're in) - for swearing and casual innuendo. There is nothing too heavy or dark about the following.
PAIRING: ? - no real pairing.
DISCLAIMERS: Buffy, Ethan and Giles are the property of Joss Whedon, only borrowing them.
NOTES: This isn't so much a story as a collection of snippets (very *very* short stories) they range in content and the only thing they share in common is Ethan Rayne, he features in all and sundry. This hasn't been beta-read - idiocy is the product of yours truly.
FEEDBACK: Please.

In the gap between desire and enactment, intention and infliction, *want* and *have* compassion begins. - Margaret Atwood.

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1/. Spectres.

It felt like half of England had migrated to the town of Sunnydale. Three months gone and Buffy's heart still leapt whenever she heard a British accent. Stupid. She knew his voice, would have recognised his tones anywhere, but there was that moment of blindness when hope reared its head, sly whispers that Giles might have returned. She could close her eyes on such occasions - delay, nurse the feelings like a wasted child - until she opened her gaze to stare upon an alien visage.

//Alone//.

There was something *lost* about that voice, holding the pain tight to her chest to give it solace. Three months gone and Buffy couldn't hear a British accent without seeing him. Spectres in the night, ghosts in passing, and every cliché had a ring of truth… she missed him.

"Are you going to buy something?"

The shop was largely deserted, a single customer who had been flicking through the magic books for a good half hour. This wasn't a library and Anya was ready to charge him thirty cents for every page that he read; tapping her toe to let him know she meant business, in every sense of the word.

The stranger shrugged and put the book back. "I was waiting for the owner."

Anya nodded brusquely, "That's me, nice to meet you, would you like to buy something? I can recommend…"

"Rupert Giles actually. He does own this shop, no?"

Anya blinked, "My business partner, he's… indisposed."

The door to the training room swung open and Buffy emerged, eyes narrowed: "Ethan."

The customer straightened - one foot pointed toward the exit, the other toward the Slayer - he didn't answer but studied her intently. Whatever Ethan was looking for he found it, the tightness in his face relaxing: "You know, I didn't quite believe it until now."

Anya opened her mouth, about to ask 'What didn't you believe?', but Buffy interrupted her flatly.

"Get out."

The mystic inclined his head, eyes twinkling, "Certainly, back to merry ol' England it is then. Give my regards to the witch, by the way."

"Willow?" Too many tricks had been played between them and Buffy stepped forward. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing, I like the girl; using magic to keep her lover by her side, she reminds me of someone, who is it? Oh yes, that's right… me."

"Willow is *nothing* like you."

"No, of course not. God knows that girls' spells are as pure as the driven snow and work out perfectly. Not even a *hint* of chaos about her use of magic."

//She doesn't do it on purpose//, Buffy cried out silently, remembering her engagement to Spike, Giles going blind, the loss of their memories, coming back wrong, a Troll wrecking havoc over a weekend; half a dozen other spells that had gone awry. Refusing to answer, because to do so would reveal how deeply Ethan's words had struck.

She doesn't do it on purpose.

Ethan smiled at her, voice whispering through her mind like vapour. //It's Chaos luv, the best ones *never* do it on purpose//.

Anya stared at Buffy long after the customer had left, the Slayer's voice vehement as she stomped back to the training room: "I *hate* that man."

Fini.

_____________________________

2/. Infliction.

Voices like an angry swarm that rose in pitch then recoiled, stale beer and peanuts, it had been a hard crowd - swaying, throwing themselves at one another in defiance - angry eyes and pierced flesh. The emergence of punk.

They had won curry with the masses, electric guitar and drums, paying homage to the likes of The Village and Iggy Pop, early Bowie. Covers and lyrics that he knew like the back of his hand, lying on the bedroom floor with his head propped, bass turned up loud until it shivered through his bones. He knew the words, throwing them outward with a resonance of power… he held the crowd in the palm of his hand.

Curl of smoke and the song came to its last, stepping back with a fierce grin as SHE emerged. A slip of a girl in a white frock, flitting ethereal across the stage lights. There was nothing beautiful about Deirdre - as if the name itself had conspired against her - standing before the crowd as it flowed, aloof and still as a storybook Queen. Doe eyes and sallow skin, she didn't *fit*, and this mass of entity that had thrashed their way through a collection of originals and covers, knew it as surely as Giles did. He didn't give a fuck… not fitting was what punk was all about.

He stepped forward, guitar slung like some bizarre weapon and placed his hands on her shoulders, feeling the fine tremors that coursed through her frame. Giles had been onstage for forty minutes and this was the final song in their set - Deirdre's song. "Ready?" His voice was barely heard and Giles could see that the crowd was beginning to turn, bodies moving restlessly, turning away from them, turning *ugly* - cat calls and jeers as Deirdre arched her neck, eyes like empty sockets.

The drums took up and the crowd quieted under the rat-a-tat-tat of their rhythm. There was no category for this type of music - electric and bass guitar, drums - entwining into something that was *other*, a kind of folksy tune as produced by modern instruments. It had no right to exist in this pub, certainly not before the calibre of this crowd.

Brief shock that a band who had sung rock *hard* could turn on a dime… and then Deirdre stepped forward. The crowd shivered, a collective ripple; bass and electric guitar leap-frogging as they supported her, taking her vocals higher. She was a faerie given form. The music she invoked was of Elves and distant magic, the spectres of the Otherworld.

Their faces were slack with enchantment - a punk crowd rendered immobile - and into that mix Giles added his own voice. It was earthier, darker, if Deirdre's voice was of white magic then Giles was her opposite number - angels that had fallen, demons in the dark - their voices intermingling, co-existing.

It lasted scant seconds and became eternity. Their voices falling dry as the drums rolled into silence and only the two guitars played on. Randall's hair damp with sweat, head bowed as he worked the ramirez, fingers a blur, Giles a foot apart and keeping pace with the bass. They glanced up simultaneously - a shared smile of secrets - and the music shifted, blurred, Spanish flamenco whispering slyly until the guitars pounded to a stop.

Giles felt someone sit beside him.

The advantage of a punk crowd was that they flaunted the normal civilities of groupies. They didn't hang around, they didn't *talk*. On more than one occasion Giles had found himself in the thick of a fight, battling in some back alley after a performance. Not because they hated the music and not because they had a bone of contention, but because they *could*. Fierce joy in violence and bloody knuckles, the alley cat rules of survival. Giles mostly walked away from those fights grinning - on occasion, he had even crawled.

That someone had plonked down beside him wasn't a matter of concern. It was probably a member of the band, certainly not a punk with their sneers and cultivated aloofness, just Randall or Tommy, yet he knew that wasn't so. Giles hesitated, feeling the ring of condensation soak through the denim of his jeans; tilting the beer upwards he took a swallow and slitted one eye open cautiously.

A curl of smoke lingered around long fingers.

The man wasn't a punk - neither was Giles when you came right down to it - but the stranger didn't have the concession of a leather jacket either. He was dressed quite neatly in expensive clothes, good looking in a pointed way.

Giles stretched his legs out comfortably on the opposite chair and opened both eyes to consider him.

Without ceremony the stranger said: "I was impressed." Ethan Rayne nodded toward the stage, referring to the earlier performance.

He didn't look like he was from a record company and internally Giles breathed a sigh of relief. Randy had been harping on about finding an agent. It was a pipe-dream, they were good but they weren't *that* good, and silently Giles preferred it that way. He sang because he enjoyed it, not for illusions of grandeur, only frequenting the pubs that dotted London's highways and alleys. "Thanks."

"Not many people could play that type of music to this crowd and get away with it."

Giles' smile was a little sour as he sipped from the beer. 'Getting away with it' was an objective term - he hadn't left the building yet.

Ethan shifted, eyes intent: "How long have you been practising magic?"

Unease tangled and Giles realised belatedly that he was cut adrift in a conversation that made no sense. He hadn't drunk that much, surely? "Sorry?"

"The magic. It's in your voice, both you *and* the girl, but I'm more interested in you at the moment."

There was no answer to that, staring at the other man blankly until something registered in Ethan's eyes, his voice slow and somehow pleased. "You didn't know…"

***********

Choices had the tendency to bite you on the arse.

Did he regret the friendship? If he had his days over would he do it different? The answer on both accounts was no - they were part and parcel of who he was. Any sense of wisdom had its cost, tangled in the currency of blood. He would do it exactly the same, each step, gesture, smile. Ethan Rayne regretted none of it - he couldn't say the same for Giles.

There had never been any easiness between them, only a subterranean hum of tension; like two echidna's meeting for the first time, the clash of spiky quills. Wary respect. Dangerous humour. Moments in time that transcended and became *deeper*. Rightness like the pop of a dislocated shoulder as it was jolted into place.

Home was where one was most comfortable and he could still remember his mother's iron-clad smile. It was no ones fault that Ethan Rayne was most comfortable amidst the ravages of a storm…riding the whirlwind.

************

"Are we friends, Ethan?"

Curious that Giles chose that moment to ask it, back to back in the alley as the shadows twisted. Except it wasn't really shadows, not if you looked closely, the smell of piss, despair - something sweet and rotting. Are we friends, Ethan?

Craning his neck backward Ethan could feel the solid warmth of the other man. Giles' eyes had shifted, Ethan knew it even before he sighted him. He didn't know why, it wasn't as if magic were colour- coded - black eyes for the Dark Arts, white eyes for the Good - and even if it were, white eyes was plain *freaksome*, like staring into the milky gaze of a corpse. Giles' eyes were naturally green unless he invoked the Wilder Arts - neither dark nor white they turned incandescent, the after-glow of the summer sun. Strange eyes like the colour of whisky. Are we friends, Ethan?

And as the demon rose before them, tearing through masonry and cobbled stone - mouth an open furnace - Ethan laughed, acknowledging Giles' question carelessly: "No. I'm more like your personal devil."

************

He hadn't known Giles was a Watcher. The man wasn't exactly a liar but he had a mouth like a steel trap, and as secrets went, it had been a wise one to keep. The lack of information amused Ethan now more than it angered him, but it had cut deeply at the time, tearing through the filaments of trust - and that omission, *deception*, call it what you will - made him want Giles more.

Friends? No. It had never been friendship between them.

Fini.

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3/. Mayhap, Mayhem?

"Oww, dammit, stop wriggling!"

"I'm not wriggling, I'm… I'm… good God, is that your foot, get it OUT from under my nose!"

Giles had never heard that particular shade of exasperation in his Slayer's voice and a part of him wanted to point out that it wasn't his foot. But telling Buffy that it was Ethan's sock that she was currently sniffing would only end in violence.

//Relax, take a deep breath… no, no, NO//, he was going to find Ethan's shoe if it killed him.

Giles twisted a little to the left and heard dual groans - one falsetto, one low - he couldn't be sure but he thought the falsetto was Ethan, he was after all, stuck on the bottom of this particular rubbish heap.

"Giles, is that you?" Buffy's voice was a little uncertain, "There's something poking into my… never mind."

A silence more impressionable than any exclamation.

Giles' voice was entirely too pleasant: "Ethan?"

"WHAT?!!!"

Harried - definitely harried - Giles could almost hear the 'It's not my fault!' tagged onto the end of it. A kick that caught Giles in the ribs told him where Ethan's other foot was located and the Watcher dug down deep, fingers curling around a thatch of hair before pulling the man to his feet. Ethan hissed - Buffy cursed as she was rolled unceremoniously - and the three of them struggled to their feet with pointed looks of accusation. There was a nice symmetrical feel to it too, Giles thought a little sourly, ducking Buffy's heated stare as he glared at Ethan, who in turn smiled quite cheerfully at the Slayer.

"Surprise," Ethan muttered weakly.

There was a significant part of Buffy that wanted to haul back and let Ethan have it - a rabbit punch to the nose - something that would *smart*. Another voice argued that she ought to let bygones be bygones, because whatever the consequences, Ethan had brought Giles here and for that she could almost kiss him.

Willow had told her about teleportation. Hell, she had even seen it in practice when Glory had vanished within the blink of an eye. But to have one mystic, a Watcher and a demon emerge five feet above her head (a kind of stop-motion variation on Wile E Coyote) had been a trifle unexpected. Actually, now that the immediate crisis had averted, it was enough to make her giggle - that instinctive step *backward* as they crashed at her feet - a malicious song of satisfaction.

Bitter that Giles had left? No, not in the least.

Deciding that it was easier tackling Ethan, Buffy swung on the nomadic pain-in-the-butt and spat: "YOU did this!"

Ethan straightened, as much as he could with one shoe on a garbage heap. "Excuse me?"

"This," Buffy waved her arms, a nonsensical gesture that was meant to incorporate the demon and the events that had transpired. "All of it. You… you *planned* it!"

Ethan's voice became plaintive: "Giles, are you certain this girl went to college? Her definition of Chaos is a little bewildering - I didn't *plan* anything."

Giles clambered over the edge of the dumpster and dropped to the asphalt. Behind him, Buffy's voice rose an octave: "No, you just raised a demon and brought it here."

Ethan fixed his stare on Giles, "Are you going to step in?"

The Watcher bent and picked something up, tossing the missing shoe at Ethan carelessly: "Buffy, Ethan didn't raise the demon… he was helping me fight it."

Her mouth opened, closed. "What?"

He shrugged, "A friend of mine had a problem - a rural community, missing livestock - and a modus operandi that looked like animal sacrifice… only it wasn't."

Giles was helping people - it shouldn't have come as a shock yet something inside of her shivered; a knot in the back of her throat. He looked at ease with himself, a smile that came readily to his lips, eyes glinting in the near dark as he held his body still. Parting windfalls of information with the same old enthusiasm.

She could remember the days when dragging a smile from Giles' had been like pulling teeth from a hen. The first year in Sunnydale Xander and herself had kept a running bet on who would be the first to make Giles laugh. Not a shy smile but a belly laugh - the type of laughter that left you helpless. Oddly, she couldn't seem to recall either of them winning. Giles' humour tended to be sarcastic and quiet, or down-right scathing.

Buffy's eyes sought him out, looking deeper than she had ever cared, and what she saw dismayed her.

Time away had done him well.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder - or in the case of her own father, it made you forget. Buffy had not inherited Hank's proclivity -and the time spent apart had driven to light certain truths.

A short story that she had read years before; set in the fifties. It had been a feminist novel, yet that particular undercurrent had escaped her at the time. It had been about vampires - and yet they walked in daylight and called themselves friends.

A free spirit who had married her lover and watched him blossom under her care. A free spirit who had channelled her energies into her husband and watched as he grew handsome and powerful and rich, while she sat back and sacrificed her own career. A free spirit who grew stagnate and had withered.

Role reversal - yet it pretty much came to the same - she had used Giles constantly; never appreciating him until she lost the solid foundation of his support.

Was it right for him to have left? Something young and frightened said no, and something that was new, only beginning to find its feet, said yes. He had needed it as much as she.

Giles was reforging old ties - magic and covens were a part of that world - and to a degree, so was Ethan.

But she couldn't shake the voice of petulance, the infernal child who was used to having her own way. Giles was helping people, people who *weren't* her - people in England - because it wasn't like she needed any help on the bloody Hellmouth of all places.

No, maturity seemed to have taken a step back.

Closing her eyes Buffy forced a breath and asked: "The demon that came through the teleportation with you? The first one, as opposed to the second one - what was that?"

The first demon had been impervious to not only the magic of the two men, but to the Slayer as well.

The second demon had been Hell's answer to Jurassic Park - her neck was stiff from looking upwards.

Giles and Ethan exchanged a look, quicksilver communication that reminded Buffy of Willow and Tara - knowing what each other was thinking with a single glance.

Giles' expression was a little sheepish, "Er, it was a Naissur demon."

"A masseur?"

Ethan groaned as he climbed out of the dumpster, "I wish."

Nonplussed, Buffy followed his lead, bumping into Ethan when the man stooped to put on his shoe, her voice pseudo-pleasant: "And how come I couldn't kill it?"

The sheepish expression on Giles' face increased tenfold: "They're… um…durable."

"Durable?" Buffy echoed.

Ethan glanced sideways, "But not inedible."

"So it was *you* who summoned the second demon… " She trailed to a stop, eyes narrowing as she zeroed in on Rayne: "You came here so that I could act as bait!"

"A distraction," Giles corrected hastily, ignoring Ethan's whispered aside - better you than me. "Naissur demons are indestructible, Buffy. I needed time to figure out how to get rid of it, raising the Htims…"

"It was YOUR idea to raise the T-Rex?!!!"

"It wasn't that tall, and it did eat the first demon."

"Giles, I stabbed it in the *knee-cap*, the knee-cap…"

"Yes, after which I sent it back to Hell, taking the Naissur with it." He rubbed his forehead, voice wry: "Rather a lot of effort for a sheep-eating demon."

Maybe it was the way he said it, or the slight curl of his lip, but the outrage evaporated, replaced by a bubble of mirth.

Giles looked alive, more alive than she had ever seen him, and with that came a tinge of sadness. There was no escaping the fact that Buffy hadn't witnessed this side of him, a harsh truth in its own right, because it meant Giles had never felt comfortable enough in her presence to reveal it.

There were aspects to his character that she would never know.

The Smiths' 'London' raced in the background as they entered the café, looking like survivors from a shipwreck. Morrissey's semi- accusing voice questioned: 'Do you think you made the right decision this time?', before pounding into the instrumental.

It made Giles uneasy, catching Buffy's eye as he sat down.

Ethan had taken one look at them and had begged off, claiming he had other business to attend.

"You're not coming back, are you?" There was no hostility, weary acceptance in her voice - a brave face - watching the cars pass outside, headlights flooding the landscape in alien shades. The murmur of fellow customers and the quiet clink as Giles stirred his tea.

Silence was it own answer.

No, he wasn't coming back. Giles' tone was gentle as he nudged her: "I'm a phone call away, Buffy."

That distance had seemed immutable once - a chasm - twenty thousand leagues *over the sea rather than under it; but that was before she knew Giles could teleport. There was something in the way he said it - a promise - Giles wasn't Hank, and the distance between them didn't mean she was forgotten. If she took the effort to call…

Buffy closed her eyes and swallowed, opening them to find his gaze fixed on her, solid warmth and humour. She covered his hand with her own, remembering the coiled strength when he had thrown her head first into the dumpster. The gates of Hell simmering into existence with a blast of heat, closing around the Htims; and began talking to him, small or big, the intricacies of her own life.

Ethan didn't know why he had waited, sitting on the park bench as he studied the sky. Nothing had been said between them and there were no guarantees that Giles was coming. Studying the formations of constellations until a step fell behind him. Ethan didn't need to turn his head, relief and anxiety warring as he asked: "Coming?"

Ethan's eyes were dark as he stood, Giles noted it, the same as he noted the curled fingers and the sardonic expression on the man's face, body braced. Giles noted it and commented on none of it, his voice flippant when he answered: "I'm going to regret this in the morning."

He saw the slow blink, Ethan's body wavering in surprise, and then the mystic nodded sagely, mouth curling in an aborted smile: "Everybody needs a hobby."

Fini.