Title: Mumukshutva 1/6
Author: Magpie
Disclaimer: Main characters and locations Mutant Enemy.
Feedback: Magpie@moracle.co.uk

Sunnydale, September 2001

"Lokah samastha sukhino bhavanthu." (May this world be established with a sense of well being and happiness.) - Sanskrit prayer.

"You're working too hard," Ethan says, as he puts the mug down on the coffee table beside Giles' notes. "If you don't take things a little easier, you'll make yourself ill."

Giles glances up at him. "I'm sorry, love. It's just, with Buffy gone, none of us--"

"Can afford to be complacent, I know. You know I understand." Ethan sits down beside him on the sofa and combs his fingers through Giles' hair above his ear. The touch feels almost analgesic, and Giles moves into it, ever so slightly. "You look so tired though, my dear. You can't expect me not to worry."

A little sunburst of gratitude warms him inside. Giles lets his pen drop and turns to softly kiss his lover -- deeply, meaningfully, reverently. It really is rather nice having Ethan back with him again.

"Why did I ever let you go?" he murmurs, after their lips wetly part.

"As I recall," Ethan replies good-naturedly, "you left me. Hush now." He strokes Giles' head as if soothing a fretful cat. "Didn't we agree not to discuss what's gone, only what's now or is to come?"

"Still so wise." Giles wonders at that, putting an arm around his lover and pulling him closer. "And so beautiful."

Ethan seems unchanged by the years that have made a weathered crag of Giles' own features. There are no lines on the soft skin Giles' fingers now explore, none of those spindly cuneiform histories that inform of Giles' own story all too plainly. There's no grey in the thick brown curls Giles presses his lips to, inhaling the product scent as if it were the balm of Gilead. Ethan is only a very slim picking short of a miracle.

A sudden incongruous memory of an old man arises, familiar dark eyes in a stranger's ravaged face. Who is that, and why is Giles recalling his image now?

Ethan is frowning. "You're brooding," he accuses. He has never liked Giles' attention to be anywhere other than upon him for too long, but Giles doesn't mind. Now more than ever he appreciates being needed by someone; it gives him a reason to... continue. "Are you thinking about Buffy?" Ethan's gentle question is characteristically perceptive.

"I was heading in that direction," Giles confesses.

"My poor Ripper," Ethan says, his voice rich with warmth and sympathy. With a smooth surge of movement, he is up on the sofa, straddling Giles. "Losing someone whose existence defines you is not easily recovered from."

Giles wonders how Ethan could possibly know that, then with a sudden clenching realisation, he understands. "Oh. Ethan, I'm so very sorry." He can't even remember now why he did it. His reasons seem... meaningless.

"Shh," Ethan soothes; the noise makes Giles think of English autumns, warm behind glass while the October winds bully the sycamores. "Build no abodes in the past, my dear. It is a dark and broken land and cannot be mended." He kisses Giles softly on the forehead, on both cheeks just below the eyes.

"I was a fool," Giles nonetheless insists. "I blamed you for--"

"Rupert, hush. Please. Don't corrupt the bright now with the dismal then. We're together here, in this place, and that's all that matters."

Giles knows that's not so; knows that the past is vital catechism for every mortal soul. But Ethan denies the past with every wrinkle missing from his perfect face. "Did you use some kind of enchantment?" Giles asks him, and a dark disturbance seems to momentarily flicker in Ethan's eyes. "To stay so young? Is there a portrait in an attic somewhere of a hideous old man?"

Again, there is that memory that isn't. An old man certainly, but not hideous. Who *is* he?

Ethan looks petulant and doesn't answer; does in fact take Giles' face in his long fingers and bend to kiss him with drawn out sensuality. Kissing Ethan is biting into the perfect nectarine, impossibly sweet and juicy, and discovering it is stuffed with jalapenos.

Knowing the kiss is meant to distract does not prevent Giles being distracted. One of his hands tangles in dark curls, the other moves without conscious permission to the small of Ethan's back, jerking him closer. Ethan dances over his lap like a caught snake, and Giles feels his blood surging into his cock in eager response.

The kiss pauses, bands of saliva snapping softly to his lips as Ethan pulls back. "Let me help you relax," Ethan offers. "Let me give you what you're missing."

Doting and heated, Giles smiles and nods, and Ethan slips down his body like a garment dropping to the floor. Giles' knees are pulled apart, and Ethan moves in between, every movement as smooth and rich as whipped Jersey cream.

Grinning up at Giles, Ethan tells him, "I'm really rather fond of you, you know," before playing teasing fingertips over the bulging asymmetry in Giles' trousers.

"Ethan," he breathes, as his eyes flicker briefly shut. Mercurially quick fingers undo his belt and button. Memories of Ethan's mouth, of the things he can do with it, threaten to overwhelm Giles as if he were still a sex-ready lad. "Oh, love."

The tug at his zipper is a pull on his heart. Emotions, so long the things to be beaten down, pushed into underground vaults -- archived then and safe to forget -- are suddenly acceptable again. Not since Ethan was last with Giles has it felt so good to simply *feel*.

"I'm so glad you're back." How could Giles have survived the loss of his Slayer without this blessing?

Ethan smiles tenderly up at him before peeling the sides of Giles' trousers apart, revealing embarrassingly crinkled boxers. Giles doesn't even have time to cringe however before Ethan's hand is slipping inside them. "Do you know how long I've been waiting to do this to you again?" Ethan murmurs, sounding rather emotional himself.

"Dear God..." Giles groans through gritted teeth, as his cock is gathered up like fragile treasure, like honey from the hive. Knowing fingers squeeze gently up the length of it before drawing it out into the air.

"Still the best, Ripper," Ethan murmurs; Giles can feel the words as warmth and the shiver of lips across his cockhead. "Still made to make my mouth water." And before he can stop chuckling at the old slogan, there is wetness and heat and slippery pressure, and oh...

"God," he bites off, tipping his head back, pressing it into the top of the sofa. "Ethan."

He is lost, wandering blind in a maelstrom of memory and long-imprinted response. Ethan's lips, his tongue, his teeth... dear lord, this feels as familiar as the sudden scent of his mother's French perfume, or the cry of a buzzard at twilight.

Giles' fingers claw into the cushions as Ethan's spider over his balls. Ethan is making small, happy noises in the back of his throat; they sound almost studious, as if he's an artist pleased with his own work. Giles tries to slow his panting, control his reactions, hold himself back, but it's hard. He's so hard.

"Ethan... Ethan, I'm going to... It won't take long." Ethan pauses halfway down Giles' cock, his eyes lift, his gaze meeting Giles', and he grins around his mouthful. Giles feels his balls tug in at the sight. Good God. Still so beautiful, his rascal boy, his gypsy urchin, his... "Love," he breathes.

Ethan reaches out for one of Giles' hands from the cushion and pulls it to him, pushes Giles' fingers into dark curls, encouraging Giles' to hold his head, inviting him to do so much more.

And Giles does. Without thought or question, his fingers thread through Ethan's hair, and he starts to hump upwards, fucking his lover's mouth. Teeth scrape his length and the sensation is so far removed from pain he hears himself laugh. The desire in his loins is huge and heavy, as if all the blood he has is lying there, distilling, intensifying and oh God, Ethan, Ethan, Ethan...

***

Giles woke with a tiny gasp, clutching desperately at the tail feathers of the dream. But it was gone like the last swallow of summer. He was unarguably and unhappily awake.

For a while he lay still, collecting together the fragments of the night. The feel of Ethan's lips, softly teasing, and the unlikely comfort of his presence, dark eyes like a welcoming door after a long trek through icy wilderness -- these things and more Giles identified, collated, and then discarded as waste.

Once the dream-chaff was gone, he seemed to have precious little grain of truth to show for his efforts. A suitable metaphor, he caught himself thinking bitterly, for a sterile life.

As he sat up in bed, he felt the covers drag stickily against his belly. Oh. He hadn't done that in a long time. But it was always Ethan when he did, of course; never one of the few and far between lovers since. Not even Jenny.

Always Ethan. Giles' body remembered even while his mind was self-intimidated into forgetting.

Ethan. Once so beautiful.

But Giles knew it was never a good idea to allow himself to dwell on his... on the troublesome Chaos mage, so he forcibly dragged his thoughts to the day ahead and his body to the shower.

He turned the water up hot; hot enough to scald his skin sunburn-pink. But it didn't warm him up inside, and it didn't make him feel clean. As he soaped his belly and cock, washing away the evidence of his foolish subconscious, all he really felt was terribly, appallingly old.

As usual these days, he turned the radio on to break the crust of silence left from the night as he made himself some tea and toast. The BBC world service, of course, and the world wasn't getting any kinder; humans were still selfish, sadistic and fundamentally flawed creatures.

Giles believed in original sin.

Not perhaps in the rather literal definition some Christians employed, but that human beings were born with 'sin' pre-existent in their faulty genes; yes, that he felt certain about. But of course, he reminded himself as he always did, they had to be. Were humans born perfect, free will would be meaningless. It was only in creatures capable of great evil that the choosing of good could have any true significance.

It was a sound and edifying principle that Giles clung to, but on days like today, when all there seemed to be was suffering and hell on earth, he wondered how any benevolent god could possibly allow it to continue.

Which was why, of course, he didn't believe in one.

Hell and heaven -- yes, there were plenty of those. Many hellgods and Powers as well who would play with humanity like chess pieces or worse given half a chance. But no unifying principle, no gentle all-seeing patriarch. At least, not one that gave a damn about individual human beings. Or about him.

Or Buffy.

The name of his Slayer in his mind felt like a barbed whiplash upon his back.

Wincing, he turned off the radio. Perhaps he should consider watching mindless morning television with the rest of waking America from now on.

He walked to the shop, as always. He refused to surrender to the irresponsible culture of the car-dependent Californian. Anya wasn't yet there, so he dealt with the morning's mail in silence while pretending that he didn't see the occasional flashes of Ethan's grin, that expression which on the older man seemed smug and sinister, but on the boy had been exciting, provoking...

Neither did he feel the ghost-caress of soft lips across his skin under his clothes, leaving a trail of goose pimples in their wake.

The pretence was less than successful. By the time Anya's arrival shattered the church-like still of the shop-before-hours with a jangling bell and a rousing, "Good morning, Giles," he'd been sitting for some minutes staring into nowhere, lost in thoughts of the strange and unlikely Ethan of his dream.

Unlikely even without the Dorian Gray motif.

Even when things had been good between them, those few spare years between Oxford and Eyghon followed by Oxford once more, Ethan had been a selfish little bastard. Every time, for instance, that Giles had gone down with flu, Ethan's reaction had been to tut at the inconvenience and accuse Giles of putting it on. The nurturing presence of the dream had not been authentic.

Of course, one thing Ethan and the dream manifestation *had* had in common was his skilled mouth. No one, before or since, had ever used their mouth on Giles the way Ethan had. His tongue had been like a--

"Have you been sniffing the Hargot Powders, Giles?"

Startled, he inhaled sharply. "Er, pardon?"

Anya was staring at him with a slightly perturbed expression. "Or the amulet drawer?"

"Have I been sniffing the amulet drawer?"

"No, stupid. Some of our more expensive trinkets can be used to entrance. You know that."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses. "I'm not entranced, Anya."

"Well, pfft. I can see that *now*."

Feeling totally inadequate for the day ahead, Giles nonetheless drew himself to his feet. "It's time to open."

She sighed and huffed. "I just told *you* that. And also, since you obviously weren't listening at all while you were off being not-entranced somewhere, I told you we're out of those Egyptian love charms that sold so well, the borage and eyebright potions have spoiled overnight, we're due a shipment of terracotta figurines this afternoon from Abraxis which I want you to sign for since their delivery woman gives me goosebumps, and last night the Bot got itself broken somehow and no one's saying how, but I think Spike did it."

He blinked at her for a few seconds, then headed for the door to lift the blinds, unlock, and turn the sign.

"Well?" Anya demanded.

He turned back to her. "Well what?"

She stared at him wordlessly, arms folded, then sighed and walked to behind the counter. Grateful, Giles headed out the back to Bu-- to the training room.

He carefully didn't look at the weapons or Xander's dummy, heading instead for the desk they'd set up at the back. He sat down and opened up the shop ledgers. With the practice and dedication of a Buddhist monk, he turned off all his thinking mind bar the part that processed numbers.

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