Title: Mumukshutva, an intense longing for liberation (complete)
Author: Magpie
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Giles/Ethan
Warning: m/m slash, angst, mild kink, magic, existentialism...
Length: 31,142 words (Six chapters and a prologue)
Timeline: Set after Gift and before Bargaining.
Disclaimer: Main characters and locations Mutant Enemy.
Feedback: Magpie@moracle.co.uk
Archiving: Please ask.
A/N 1: Many thank-yous to Mad Poetess and Wesleysgirl for beta-reading.
A/N 2: British spelling throughout
A/N 3: Written for Wolfling's livejournal based Gilesficathon. Dedicated to Isabeau who set my challenge :-)
Summary: "Suppose you keep the head of a man immersed in water. He will struggle for breath. He will desire intensely to get out of the water so that he can breathe. He will forget everything of this world. His sole concern will be freedom from the water. Such an intense desire for liberation is Mumukshutva." -- Swami Sivananda (highly paraphrased).

London, January 1976

"Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day, for it and it alone is life." - Sanskrit proverb, possibly apocryphal.

"Fucking right on."

Ripper slowly became aware that he was grinning stupidly. He felt like he'd just come off the big Waltzers at Southend after an endless, breath-nicking ride of a lifetime. Hosting Eyghon was just... out of this bloody world. *This* was what he'd left his family and future for. Well, this and Ethan.

Ethan was lying beneath him, face down to the floor. "You alright, love?" Ripper asked, pulling himself out, up, and off. Both of them seemed to have lost their trousers somewhere along the rather hazy line. Ethan's shirt was in tatters too.

There was a grunt in reply from his lover, almost indistinguishable from the grunts coming from Thom, whose sleeping body Eyghon had apparently moved on to after leaving Ripper's. Thom seemed, to Ripper's quick glance, to be attempting to shag both Deirdre and Randall simultaneously. The demonic guise Thom now wore looked like a masquerade mask on his chubby features, and Ripper laughed. Even riding a demon, the boy was still about as suave as grubby terry towelling.

They were all crammed into the ritual circle, the necessary sacrifice still a small heap of blood and feathers in the centre. Phillip was kneeling up watching the others, his hand around his cock and working furiously as if his life would be at stake if he couldn't keep himself on the brink. All of them had at least one arm bare, showing off their new tats, proud in the blunt ugliness of the mark.

The air stunk of Ethan's rank incense. Heady and intense, rich with dope and pungent spice, it made everything seem that much more vivid and unreal to Ripper. And that was without the endorphin kick from the demon, which was fading slowly now like the echo of orgasm, but the memory of the power he'd held remained. Riding Eyghon had been crown and sceptre and key to the city; he'd felt like there was nothing he couldn't do, nothing he shouldn't do.

He'd never known a high like it, and he wanted to share, to boast and expound, to wax lackadaisical to the one person who'd let him without taking the piss. Well, not and mean it, anyhow.

"Love?" he asked again, nudging gently with the heel of his hand upon Ethan's arse. Ripper's breath caught suddenly on barbed wire as he noticed a dark red smear near his hand. "Ethan?" he said, more urgently.

Ethan rolled slowly over, wincing, and propped himself up on an elbow to look at Ripper. "Hope my turn to be put under comes soon," he grumbled, but then brightened. "Was it as much of an up as it seemed?"

"Yeah, completely," Ripper confirmed, but he was still frowning. "Have I hurt you?"

"I'll heal." Ethan pulled himself up into a sprawl, wincing slightly. There were dark bruises on his shoulders, and his lips were split and swollen. He seemed to be studying Ripper's features, now presumably fully human again; Ripper wished he'd asked for a Polaroid to be taken. "You were," Ethan chuckled slightly, "demonic. An unstoppable force, but I, sadly, was not an unmoveable object."

Ripper was still frowning. He could feel the line between his brows like a finger pressing in. It felt incongruous against the backdrop of power and joy yet throbbing inside him.

"Ah," Ethan said, looking slightly exasperated. "I know that expression. Come on, Ripper. There's no need for guilt. Didn't we agree that our responsibility would end with ourselves? Do as thou wilt and all that? Minor injuries were inevitable; we knew that going in."

God, Ethan was beautiful.

He always had been, of course, with his curls like a Botticelli cupid, dark eyes, long loose limbs, and that mouth Ripper could never resist. He'd followed that mouth from Oxford to London, hadn't he? Let that mouth talk him into ever greater excesses. But somehow, bruised and bleeding, the mouth, and indeed Ethan himself, were even more exquisite.

Ripper cringed inside. What exactly was he becoming?

Ethan, of course, had seen it in Ripper; had renamed him for it. Ethan had encouraged Ripper to release it on prats in the street who took the piss -- usually out of Ethan. And it felt good to let loose. To break bones, split flesh apart, make the tossers scream... It felt like power, like Eyghon.

It felt like a balm to the little boy who'd been strapped into a pre-set future from the day he was born.

But he wasn't meant to do it to friends, to people he cared about. Ripper looked at his battered lover and felt aroused. He felt sick.

"Not sure I like the side effects," he admitted gruffly, reaching out to lightly stroke fingertips over some marks he'd just spotted on Ethan's arms -- blood-crusted half-moons.

"Randall made those," Ethan said dryly. "Sorry, but you can't hog all the blame, delicious though I'm sure it is."

"Why don't you care?" Ripper asked him. Behind him, Deirdre was either climaxing or being murdered. Judging by Ethan's disgusted expression, it was the former. Ethan didn't think much of the only girl in their group, maybe because he knew Ripper fancied her.

"It's just flesh." Ethan shrugged. "It doesn't matter what we do with it; it's not what's important."

"Then what is?"

Ethan reached out and stroked Ripper's leg, his fingers so light that the touch felt like a whisper passing over his bare flesh. "You. Me. Who we are inside. The night. The magic."

"We're no one at all without our bodies," Ripper pointed out.

"They're just vehicles," Ethan insisted. "Containers. Nobody cares about the chocolate box once it's opened."

There was a roar from behind them, and they both looked around to see Thom coming deep inside Deirdre's throat. His eyes, dark pink more than red, like strawberry sweeties, jerked from side to side as if searching for something. Still hard, Thom shoved Deirdre violently down to the floor and made a grab for Phillip's hair, dragging the lad to him; there was no rest period while Eyghon was in you. Phil cried out.

Ethan caught Ripper's arm as he moved to help. "Leave them. Remember what we agreed? Don't spoil it for them."

"Thom's hurting them."

"He already has. *You* already have. That's Eyghon, and that's what we signed up for. Don't wreck their picnic, Ripper."

Reluctantly, Ripper sat back down, keeping his back guiltily to the disturbing scene. "I don't like this; it's... it's too bloody dangerous." He found himself rubbing at his own ears, as if half-expecting them to still be batlike and protruding.

"Ah." Ethan found his trousers, which had been near as damn it shredded, and took out his small flask from one pocket. "What's the worst that could happen? Some cuts, some tears, some bruising? Even broken bones will heal. Relax, dear. Enjoy it all while it lasts."

"Much worse could happen," Ripper insisted, a familiar feeling of being the country mouse to Ethan's mouse-about-town sophisticate settling over him. "What if Eyghon claims us? We wear his mark; we've called him. It's not impossible he could find a way to claim our souls."

Ethan took a swig from his flask, then chuckled darkly. "Bit late to worry about that, isn't it? Anyway, he's already been inside of you, and you're fine. Soul's still your own." He passed the flask to Ripper. "Drink deep, my dear. You need to relax. You've got the post-possession jitters."

Needing Ethan's homemade and somewhat lethal potion more than he wanted to admit, Ripper swigged it back. Shuddering at the sweet-bitter taste, he then concentrated on staying relatively upright for the next few moments. Ethan had always refused to tell anyone his recipe, but Ripper knew for certain that it contained both liquid opium and absinthe -- the proper Spanish stuff with the full quota of wormwood.

Ethan was staring at the heap of moaning bodies behind Ripper with interest, but Ripper found he didn't want to turn around. He put the flask down and drew Ethan to him. "Don’t want you to lose your soul either."

"Never happen," Ethan reassured him with a smirk. "*Can't* happen. It's already claimed."

Cold trickled into Ripper's guts and bones, the pleasant hum from the potion instantly vanishing. He grabbed Ethan's shoulders and shook him, staring at his lover in horror. "What the bloody hell have you done?"

Wincing in pain as Ripper pressed into the bruises already there, Ethan said, "No, you stupid git. I've done nothing. I meant *you*."

Guiltily, Ripper slowly released his hands. "Me?"

"Can't sell my soul to any demon, my dear, when I've already signed it over to you."

"Yes, well. Romantic metaphor is all very well, but this is reality, Ethan, and--" There was so much noise from behind him that he had to stop talking, which was a good job really, as he'd heard himself becoming increasingly pompous.

He hated it when he sounded like the life he'd escaped from.

Looking around, he saw that Phil and Randall were wrestling the semi-possessed Thom down onto his back, and he was enraged about it, howling and cursing, fangs gnashing. The plan seemed to be for Deirdre to ride Thom, and despite his misgivings, Ripper felt his cock respond to the idea; he wanted to see it. He groaned, confused. Which emotion was the correct one here?

He never knew the answer to such questions, which is why he invested so much bloody time and energy into controlling his feelings. And why Ethan seemed to take it as a personal challenge to make Ripper let loose, make the control drop and mayhem ensue.

He heard Ethan tut and felt fingers on his cheek, turning his face back towards his lover, who then asked gently, "What made you think it was metaphor?"

He was drugged and coming down from a massive high; it therefore took him several seconds to understand what Ethan meant. "Has to have been a metaphor," he said slowly.

Ethan's smile was almost sympathetic.

"You can't have!" Ripper exclaimed. "I'd know."

Ethan chuckled a little sadly and put his hand on his heart. "I, Ethan Rayne, do so solemnly swear that my soul is and has been the property of one Rupert Giles since December the twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred and seventy five. This I swear by..." He seemed to search around for something serious enough. "By Chaos and in the names of Janus and Eris."

Ripper stared at him in amazement and more than a little fear. "My God, Ethan. Why?"

Ethan's expression filled with hurt, and he looked down. "It was a really good Christmas?" he murmured. "Only one ever, really."

Ripper's thoughts were running on the spot, moving fast and getting nowhere. He felt like Ethan was handing him a book of promissory notes for failure. Ripper couldn't possibly live up to whatever it was Ethan hoped for from him. Hadn't he already run away from the burden of great expectations? He didn't know what to say. He loved Ethan, of course he did, but this... was terrifying.

"Ethan," he started very cautiously, but then his fogged brain noticed Ethan's chest was shaking. Bloody hell, was he crying?

But no. Ethan lifted his head and revealed that he was laughing like a sodding clown, tears streaming down his face. "Just kidding, Ripper," he said gleefully. His expression was so appallingly smug that Ripper wanted to smack it from his face.

"You little--" but he got no further, as at that moment, Thom appeared suddenly from the side.

The possessed boy tackled Ethan first, slamming him down onto the floor so that Ripper actually heard the breath forced from his lover's lungs. Thom did something to Ethan's mouth that Ripper would never have described as a kiss; it was more like the tenderising of meat.

Ripper stared in sick fascination at the skin of Ethan's chest, which parted in long bloody lines, Thom dragging Eyghon-sharpened talons down and across. Ripper should do something, he knew, but he didn't even twitch a fingertip. Ethan moaned and writhed, his gaze never leaving Ripper's face.

"Ethan..." Ripper murmured, so softly he never heard the word outside his head. But Thom looked up at Ripper, his fanged mouth a mess of Ethan's blood.

A fraction of a second later, Ripper was on his back trying to stave off a rapacious attack all of his own.

NEXT