Chapter Text
"What the bloody hell is he doing!?" It wasn't the first time Giles had asked himself that and he had the horrible feeling that it wouldn't be the last either.
It had started four months ago...
~~~
Giles had been having a drink with Xander because experience suggested it was better drinking with someone who understood than it was drinking alone. And, when it came down to it, Xander seemed to understand. Andrew had been there as well. Not because he understood but, rather, because he never did. Least of all the concept of when he wasn't wanted.
Between Xander and himself they had worked their way through two bottles and twenty years of premium Scottish history. Andrew had been restricted to cider. After the slight incident the first time Andrew had discovered the joys of British spirits (one type having led to the other) he had been banned from anything that had been distilled as well as fermented.
Giles would have liked to curse Xander to the deepest pit of hell for suggesting Andrew drink cider. Unfortunately for his conscience Xander had been honestly horrified to find out (too late) that British cider was alcoholic. Banishing him to a torture dimension would have been too much like a reprieve by that point. Banishing Andrew, however, was half a bottle short of sounding very tempting. At least Xander had kept Andrew mostly occupied while he had tried to drown out Andrew's squeaky whine with the sultry burr of Laphroaig. It must have worked since he was listening to the world through a liquid distortion, his mind floating free of body and cares. It didn't matter that the two younger men were swapping war stories or that his name was being invoked frequently and, just as often, taken in vain. He didn't even react when Ethan's name drifted across to him, wrapped it's arms around him as Ethan had done so many times and complained that his kisses tasted of smoke. The warm cushion that buoyed him kept the usual anger and hurt at a distance, a construct to be studied with interest but not touched. Unlike the memories. They touched him in all the places he hadn't been touched since that last night he has spent with the Chaos mage.
Giles listened with abstracted interest as Xander lurched into a libelous retelling of the "demon incident". The individual words had no meaning for Giles but they ran down his spine with one syllable and cupped his balls with the next as the spirits held him close.
Buffy might not have thought Giles understood her relationship with Spike. In reality the problem had been that he understood it all too well. Souls didn't make everything alright and they didn't mark the boundary between good and evil. Ethan had a soul after all, or had had, and their relationship had still ended in betrayal. Even he had a soul, tattered and frayed though it might be, but that didn't stop Giles wanting... didn't stop him needing... He and Ethan had been too bound together; by friendship, by magic, by sex, by experience. Even after all the time, and everything else, that had passed Giles could still feel Ethan, when drunk enough or lonely enough. The call of his magic.... The needy whimpers and mischievous glances... Hot breath on his skin that warmed a cold night. Temptation, submission and manipulation all in one sweat-soaked reminiscence. Of all his lovers Ethan was the one he least wanted to call to mind, but the one that kept coming back to him.
It had just been luck that none of the children, innocent as they were, had asked too many questions about what had happened that night. It had been Ethan, up to his normal tricks, and that had been all they had needed to know. Ethan and tricks – the two had gone together for as long as Giles had known him. He had just never expected to be numbered as one of them. He tried not to wonder if that night had been paid for - part of whatever contract Ethan had been working on at the time. Was he filed under incidental expenses, each of the acts enumerated and billed for. Did Ethan give discounts for old friends?
Giles had taught Ethan magic so Ethan would have something to sell that wasn't himself. He should have done the world a favour and left Ethan doing the other thing he was so good at. Because he was good at it. Youthful enthusiasm and natural talent had become mind-melting skill over the years. That knowledge was something which annoyed Giles on so many levels that it annoyed him more. Most damning, having found himself numbered among that not-so-select group of Ethan's "clients", Giles wished he could at least remember more of it. Sense-memories, wet-dreams, sudden arousing flashes of recollection... he had pieced together most of it. Enough to keep himself company in the dark and to be embarrassed at the thought of the children finding out.
Giles stared down at the golden depths of his own personal scrying crystal. He just wished...
"But why? Why did he do it?" Andrew's childish inebriation leaked the words into the sotted universe within which Giles had found a home for the evening.
The question had probably been directed at Xander but any sense of direction Giles might have had was long gone so he answered without thinking.
"Because I asked him to."
In the silence that followed Giles heard his own words and the rest of his last night with Ethan came back to him in a vertigo inducing whirl. The Plan. The plan he had suggested. The plan he had come up with at 2am after alcohol and sex made everything he did seem like genius. The plan for him to infiltrate the Initiative and find out what was in Room 314. Giles could hear a meaningless clamour start behind him as he headed for the bathroom at a fast stagger. Dry heaves followed wet ones but still the knowledge stayed stubbornly inside him. He whispered Ethan's name to the pale, porcelain goddess that supported him. God! Their relationship really had ended in betrayal.
~~~
It had taken a month to confirm that Ethan was both alive and no longer in the care of the American military. Almost another to track him down. And then... And then there was a small apocalypse to deal with and the world moved on, as did Ethan. Tracking him the second time proved easier but raised a number of worrying questions about his activities. Looking at the report, Giles uttered the words that would haunt him for the next three weeks: "What the bloody hell is he doing?"
Ethan was on the move almost constantly but there was no sign of any pursuit. Giles would have happily chalked it up to paranoia if it hadn't been for the other thing – the thing that was quickly driving him insane: Ethan would arrive in a new city and spend a few days sampling the night life. As far as the watchers could tell he was keeping a low profile and not making any contacts amongst the demon or magic population. In fact the bars and clubs he hit were almost invariably human-only establishments. That in itself was not suspicious although after the third repeat it became a little... intriguing. No, the thing that was giving Giles grey hair faster than all the slayers put together was that having bar-hopped his way through the best part of a week Ethan would retrace his steps to a select number of venues and cast something.
After the first time the use of magic had been sensed (answering one of Giles' many questions about what might have happened to Ethan at the hands of the Initiative) the vast ranks of the Watchers elite researchers had sprung into action. Of course given the state of the Watchers that pretty much meant Andrew, Xander, Willow via computer and whatever slayers they could bully into helping.
Having satisfied themselves that the end of the world was not immediately nigh they had worked their way through all the magic spells and curses they could think of... And had categorically failed to match any of them to what they could discover or sense from the magical residue that lingered after Ethan left.
It wasn't even as if it was exactly the same spell every time. Calls to America and the subsequent enquiries into the demon community both subtle (Willow) and unsubtle (Faith) turned up nothing – no information on contracts, no one needing to sacrifice a barful of drunk and high clubbers or a saloon of ale-soaked ancients complete with dominoes. Not even word on how to get in contact with the reputable Mr Rayne should one want to hire him. In desperation they had even sat back and watched and waited for something to happen. It hadn't. Nothing. Ethan would arrive, do whatever it was he was doing and then move on... and everything would be in exactly the same shape, dimension and state of health after he left. The word under the street was that Ethan had retired for good.
It would have all been totally believable. If only they hadn't known he was up to something.
~~<*>~~