*****

It's a windy spring night, and Willow is longing. Spring winds are sweet, heavy things, ripe with potential, power for any witch -- if she is able to harness it. Failure would mean disaster, and they really don't need any more disaster right now.

Every witch, every warlock, every petty dabbler had run into trouble with their castings. By the evidence, everything from protection spells to necromancy had somehow... taken the caster. All over, frozen, blank-eyed statues, muttering nonsense -- or just humming it if their mouths had been shut at the time of the freezing.

Willow is only supposed to be researching, and she is, really. It's just that there's something impossibly *desirable* in the idea of bewitched bewitchings. A great power, but one she knows could be within her grasp.

Someday.

The witch or warlock or whatever had to be close for this -- close enough, perhaps, for eavesdropping. No spell counter to the one being used, instead something parallel to the same lines of force. Willow settles herself more comfortably on her bed, smiles to herself. Parallel and small. Perfect.

The last derbot seed crumbles beneath her mortar, the last word is uttered, and suddenly Willow can *feel* it, a river of it, attracted to her own power and pulling her along, right back to its source.

Right to the answer.

*

It's just past dark and Xander has all the energy in the world. Of course, it's much later than they think it is -- none of them have gotten used to Daylight Savings yet. Except maybe for Oz, he thinks, but Oz has almost reached the stage of beloved nonentity.

Gives off a sense of just... *too much* somehow, like knowing him would fill Xander's head past overflowing and he'd get lost. But Giles is off-time -- he can feel it somehow -- and so is Xander. Xander takes what companionship he can.

The air is sweet as it rushes by.

Xander remembers a time when a night like this meant he could pretend he was sleeping out just to sleep out. When he could jerk off under the stars, cheek to the lush green lawn he tended himself, hand and knees digging into the soil as he jerked, as he made love to /everyone/ himself until he'd spattered the lawn liberally with his spunk. He remembers the vague compulsion to rub it in (rub it in good) to the soil, and the smell of come and dirt on his fingers. He can almost catch it now -- some hint of that scent if not the feeling. It makes him simultaneously want to breathe deep until he can find the exact source and shut his lungs. Scents can tease. (Ampata) Perfume and rot just underneath. His mother's warm, bready smell and the patches of gray beneath her heavy breasts that he'd accidentally spied one day while she was changing.

Giles is focused on something. Dark magic's in the air and Xander feels like he's stuck in his own personal reality special: When Good Wiccans Go Bad. Giles' face is grim, set.

The face he wears that makes Xander wonder if he really *needs* those glasses. Like maybe he just needs weaponry instead.

They have that, too, though. In spades. Weighing them down on their way to wherever Giles led them. Buffy and her Army man have gone to clean out a nest of... something and Willow's in her dorm room, trying to figure it out what it all means.

Just the three of them, then, because Giles' spider sense had started tingling mid-research session back at his apartment. Xander wonders if he's ever really going to get used to the surreality of it all, to the way the air can smell so achingly *good* even when there was something pretty terrifying lurking somewhere beneath it.

The way he doesn't have to know *what's* lurking to know it's terrifying, Barbie-sized fear demons aside.

He wonders what he's smelling in the otherwise good air. If it's maybe just his own rudimentary spider sense saying 'hey, dumbass, there's *badness* this way. What the fuck are you doing?" His spider sense is often crude.

But the surface of things is still so pretty, so tempting. Just a hint of something... earthy.

Oz's eyes glitter even beyond the streetlights. There's nothing especially wolfy about his appearance, but there's *something* there that makes Xander shiver in that good/bad way he has grown accustomed to. Oz feels it, too. Whatever it is. That makes it OK somehow. And as they stride purposefully into Coolidge Memorial Park, the something is right there, perched atop the jungle gym, legs swinging.

Ethan Rayne.

Leaner, at least in this questionable light. Strangely shadowed even more than he should be. Bright white grin gleam in the darkness and he's down. Xander realizes that he's had a crossbow up and ready for some unknown period of time. Recognizes the extra shadow for what it is -- a patch over Ethan's left eye, not big enough to hide the edges of an extremely recent and ugly scar.

Ethan walks forward just a few steps and Xander can *feel* Giles tightening his finger on the release of his own crossbow for just a moment before Ethan stops again. He's still grinning, forcibly lopsided. Definitely leaner, pared down to some essential rage and glee and hunger.

"What are you doing here, Ethan?" Words gritted out one at a time,

Xander flinches inwardly at the gray cold nothing in Giles' tone.

"I must tell you, Ripper, I didn't care overmuch for the government's hospitality. Breaks some of our rules, doesn't it? Fire with fire, shadow with shadow?"

"Talk or die, it makes no difference to me."

"Neither, I'm afraid --"

And the jungle gym melts into something like mercury just before it loses color and noticeable shape. It's the wind now, a thick, wild, laughing wind that catches Xander up easily and bears him off.

He thinks he's going to be floating somewhere, backwards going waits for a fall or a rise. Instead he impacts. Whole body at once goes 'ooof' and the ground's pressed hard against his back.

He's still upright, the whole landscape tilted upright so he's spread-eagled like a gnat on the windshield of the world.

Accelerating into space. Faster. Tries to lift his head but G-forces or something are holding him down, flattening him. There's wind. He can hardly breathe. It hurts.

/gonna die like this/

And it's not fair because he was just thinking minutes ago, seconds ago that this was a thing, a place that didn't hurt him. A thing he loved. He tries... hand turned palm down into the grass.

Stroking. Wishing he could close his eyes... There's a sound like wooden sticks breaking and then a sudden shift and he's lying on the ground, just where he'd fallen. Angry men snarling. Sits up to see the back of Giles, Giles' fist in the collar of Ethan's shirt, Ethan's undiminished grin. Giles giving Ethan a shake that says a lot about how strong Giles really is. Which doesn't explain at all why Ethan is watching *him* with that grin.

He manages enough air to get up on his elbows. Giles obviously hears, says without turning. "Xander, *go*..."

And Xander thinks: y'know, it probably isn't wise to sound that much like you *care* G-Man... or sort of thinks it. Mostly thinks that it's weird how well he can see Ethan's eyes in the darkness.

How Ethan's eyes are big and glittery and doesn't the grass feel *amazing* under his palms. Tickly and soft like a beard and surprisingly not-cold. And doesn't he want to breathe now? Yes he does. Breathe deep.

Pull that scent into his lungs, hold it there, let it out. Feel it heavy in his chest as a shotgun bong hit and hey...

Giles, seen from the back, is very fucking tall.

Xander has to get up now. Not so easy as it looks since he can't actually move his eyes or look at anything but Ethan's eyes and Giles' back, loooong fucking legs, really straight long legs in jeans and there are boots at the bottom.

"Xander..." Hissed between Giles teeth.

"I don't think your charming friend wants to leave," says Ethan. Xander has made it to his hands and knees now and no, he doesn't want to leave exactly. He just wants to get closer to those legs. The soft denim, those pockets, the bulge where Giles' wallet has strained the denim white. The grass under his hands is wet now, his knees are wet. He's moving...

And then Giles snaps around to look at him and for a second he can't see Ethan's eyes and he thinks: what the *fuck*?!? But then there are Giles' eyes, he can see *Giles'* eyes and wow! Does Giles ever have blue eyes. Or maybe they're green. Not that blue or even green eyes are unto and of themselves a thing worth crawling over wet grass for but Giles' eyes... They... there is a color when a swimming pool is lit up from the inside on a dark night.

Like that.

Or like if the moon was in them and didn't you need to worship people when the moon was in them? Hadn't Giles said that. Oh yeah. Worship.

He would worship and he doesn't really know what that means only that he would do it with his mouth and his hands. And Xander feels himself flush all over just thinking that and suddenly what he wants is to be wetter. To be colder. And he lets his hands slide forward on the wet grass so he can lower himself. So he can press himself down into it, grind himself against the cooling soothing earth.

"Ethan, you bloody *fuck*..." Snarled. "You deal with *me*." And Giles' eyes are gone. Back of his head. Xander resting his burning face in the grass. Something definitely wrong here. Grass is nice, though. And there is something, a horrible wet crunch. And he hears Ethan laugh and thinks. /Now *that's* a scary sound.../

One he can just live without, thankyouverymuch, face buried in this sweet, sweet grass. Sweetgrass... he knows it's something real and he doesn't think this is it but it doesn't really matter... Giles wanted him to go away. To leave this and run and it breaks something inside, something that feels old and fragile and a little stale and it puts sweet on the hurt. Pours honey all over it and asks him to lick it up and Xander rolls himself into the ground, snaps and rolls and loves and waits for Giles to find him.

Just like this. On the ground and needy, so needy and he can admit it, he can... a gargling sound and another wet snap and a muffled thump and there is Giles, touching his hair.

Straddling his working hips and sinking down and down until Xander can't do much more than grind.

"Please --"

"You do want this, don't you? Want to be taken, claimed..." Giles' voice is mild, musing at first. Giles discussing irrelevant possibilities on issues he could care less about, and then there's something... else in it.

"*Yes*" Oh yes, oh please, right here under the moon in the moon in your eyes sweetgrass.

"You want me to fuck you." Hand on his upper back, thumb rubbing at the top of his spine. Low, throaty voice and just the slightest hint of a thrust.

It isn't a question, but Xander answers as best he can with his body and suddenly, desperately, he needs to be insulted, taken down, beaten with something hard and smooth and unforgiving for this, for doing this and needing this and loving it so much.

"You're under a hex, Xander. You mustn't -- you mustn't let yourself lose control like this." And suddenly Giles is stiff above him, doing the necessary and nothing more, pushing Xander so far away from where he needs to be he feels like crying.

"I don't care, Giles, it's a *good* spell, feels so... please..." And he's struggling, pushing, writhing but it's no good, not under this Giles, wrong, awful, real Giles with suddenly clinical touches and absolute control.

"This is killing you, isn't it? The ache, I mean. The great, empty hole inside you."

Xander starts to cry, then. No sobs or wracking cries, just angry needy tears sliding down his face. Not real Giles, just Giles pretending to take himself away to tease him. Punish him and make him hurt and use him and throw him away with spunk still running down the inside of his legs, staining the inside of his jeans somewhere somewhere somewhere in London.

Fucking gray smoggy London with the world's ugliest whores and most pathetic queers. Like him. In love with the world's biggest prick who happened to have London's biggest prick, as well.

And the thoughts are Xander's to take, freely given and feeling so right and so wrong and it's different now. Here. He can... *he* can give Ripper what he wants. What he needs. It's OK, it's all right, he doesn't mind, it's just so damned good...

"Let me up, Giles." He can hear the laughter trying to bubble up, distract him with new-strange sensations.

"Are you sure that's wise? I wouldn't want you doing something you would regret...."

So fucking formal. A safe-daddy parody of himself that makes Xander rage, and that's good, too. To rage at God with all you had, knowing the punishment would come. Knowing the price would be much too high and indulging anyway. Xander takes a shaky breath and gives back his own tease, sliding the words under the pulsing mass of his own arousal.

"I think I have it under control here, Giles. If you would just..."

And the weight is suddenly gone and Xander turns himself over onto his back. Giles is still so very tall and straight and there's no way he can tease, no way to even try and Xander's on his knees before he can think, nuzzling and nibbling at the warmth in Giles' pants until it's heat, and hardness meeting his every attack and Giles doesn't say a word *then*, just runs light teasing fingers over his scalp and Xander knows he's still crying, still needing too hard to do any good as anything other than... this. Xander presses his forehead against the flat of Giles' abdomen, feels Giles' finger begin to trace the back of his neck and beyond.

"I-I... I want you to fuck my mouth."

*

Something shifts in the air and Oz is down and rolling, feeling it prickle under the skin, feeling it whisper didn't I tell you didn't you know the world was like this, and he ignores as best he can, running back for help because Xander's gone and Giles is gone and it's only Ethan.

Ethan grinning so hard Oz thinks he can feel the man's jaw creak and he doesn't know how he got in front --

behind

around

And he's frozen. The wolf is there and not there, confused by the images and the scents of spring rotting into high summer much too soon and Oz has only himself to count on. And it's been a long time since that happened.

And he is still.

The Ethans close in, a sauntering closing circle of flesh and shadow. Their expressions are finally changing, no two are alike and this is hell, this is hell because Oz can't keep up can't follow can't know can't understand and then there is only Ethan, a great thick ring that is only one -- stretched grimacing smiling laughing snarling lusting needing knowing knowing knowing him deep inside and tugging hard at the quiet and breaking open the emptiness beneath.

heknowsheknowsheknows

and Oz is a vessel and has always been a vessel. For the infinite. The spirit. The world so long as it's not his own, not his, not close and wha happens when they all turn around and face him just. Like. This. What happens when they want all the little pieces of their souls back that Oz has so carefully hoarded?

Not real. He knows.

Not real. He *knows*.

They don't. They don't. Not real, not yet, still time...

And in a heartbeat his concentration is back and Ethan is still quite far away, hands frozen in the middle of some complex act of magic. Oz wants to charge him as he is, rip, tear him with his own bitten nails and dull square teeth, wants the blood, wants the cold numbing taste of dying magic on his tongue but he starts running again instead.

Sprinting hard, smelling his own fear-rage and snarling at it unconsciously and hitting a thick-sticky membrane of something and then there's no more street, no more houses, just woods stretching around him clear and green and alive and humming for further than he could see. Not woods.

Forest.

Home. And he's not wolfed out yet, not completely, but his eyes... he feels his eyes change and his back wants him closer to the ground and he has to... he has to run.

There's a fire to the west, moving fast and Oz quickly kicks off his shoes and strips naked, needing to feel the heat, to know, and the ground beneath his feet crackles like tinder and the soft sweet hum is the ocean now, natural roar and sweet and he needs to belong to it even though it's really the fire, crashing like a wave and roaring and too late he sees the girl.

Red hair and wide eyes and trapped, half buried and struggling and he runs closer, fingertips now and then brushing at the ground. Closer and she's crying. Closer still and she's not...

She's not buried.

She's growing out of the ground, pink and blue colors not clothes but simple decoration. Pink sweet nipple and blue. Wild red hair a corona and she can smell it coming, too, the fire, and she's weeping so hard and reaching for him, begging to be saved.

Her hands reach far, small pink vines growing from nailless fingertips to grab at his own fingers, prickly little vines. Tiny little spines and something like aloe and he steps closer still and he sees her eyes have no whites, like his own. Cloudy blue and wet and a little too large and her nose is almost an afterthought and her mouth is generous and wide and smiling at him now through the silky-slick tears and Oz is hard, terribly hard.

Something growling down in him, not very far, hungry for meat but this one would do, so lovely and strange and helpless and the wolf shows him the wide black eyes of a doe -- this, too, was theirs.

So tender.

As if he needed a lesson in *this*.

He presses his thumbs under her eyes, feeling several of her fingervines snap at the sudden movement. Eyes widen in pain as he touches her face, as his thumbs slide over her cheeks. Her temperature is a lot cooler than he'd expected it to be, but the sensation is rich, unmistakable.

Memorable and familiar and necessary so necessary won't deny, never lied about this. Not to her. She knows. She's *seen* what happens when she's like this... when anyone is like this, so wet and... perfumed. Perfumed like fresh-cut grass and sex...

Oz pounces, resting most of his weight on the good, thick stem, holding her wrists tight in one hand, flesh and water and so much green and the slickness sliding down *his* wrist from where he's cracked the vines.

She's silent now save for the slick sliding wet sounds she makes just by moving. Just by... this close Oz can see her mouth, pure pink and no tongue, no teeth, simply vines. Wild now, flailing and leaking and he has the crude vegetable cartilage of her jaw and it's splitting, too, crumbling almost beneath his touch.

He eases off some and apologizes with kisses all over her face, which has lost some of its fine-edged beauty save for the whisper of a nose... really just two slits under a button and he shoves his tongue inside one, the other and feels himself grabbed by weak little things, weak little breaking things so sweet on his tongue and then he's up, and the mouth calls him, calls him...

In with a rush, sliding on ice white water *slick* and he's pumping and pumping and when the fire rolls over him he screams his way into a full howl, flesh burnt away to give the fur room to rise and it's good like this, sweet. Smoke heat death death around him and the release doesn't free him.

It merely sets him to hunt.

*****
Part 2:

Holding onto Ethan like this... it's the first time it doesn't bring back other memories. The world is just too crowded for them now, and it doesn't matter because he won't let go. Not now.

Ethan wants Giles where *he* is. Deep inside the empty places where there would only be the two of them and the magic that lurked beyond the physical and *then* memory washes over his eyes: quicksilver slick and it's the two of them holding hands over a fire, flesh reddening but not hurt because the two of them are also... elsewhere.

Ethan's Auld Lang Syne. Ethan laying traps in the old treehouse and beckoning like the raddled old whore he was, and Giles won't follow, won't go.

Xander.

He holds onto that thought against the onslaught of their dreamscape, against his own young nude body and Ethan's and the unspoken hint of another chance to do this just as wrong as they've always done.

Another chance to end it the right way.

Xander is hexed, broken and wanton... the temptation of the altered real.

Cinnamon dust and salt sweat and all that power they toyed with then but could really have now if he only, if he only --

Ethan has the advantage. His hex on Xander requires no maintenance, no drain of energy. He can see the way it ends at the edges of the boy's spreading, desperate soul but he can't see a way *in* and the dual effort is draining him fast.

Holding Ethan this way when Ethan is nowhere near his own body.

Trusting Ethan's vanity to lead the bastard back if he believes the threat to that body is real.

(not so pretty anymore though, never anymore)

And it's close enough to his own thoughts that Giles lets it stay. He has to choose his battles now, and everything that tears his attention away from Xander pulls Giles closer into the red. The sweat and need.

Xander on his belly, on his back, eyes wide and dilate, focused on him. Xander tugging at his pants, slipping one hand under his own shirt and writhing. Lost in himself for a time.

Giles takes the opportunity to reach for the spell's seam and wishes Willow were right here at the very same time he prays to God no one will ever see this. Know this for what it is.

Ethan's backhanded gift. Ethan's revenge.

Two souls connected would always be so. Two souls connected would always be. Always. Ghost of a whisper in his ear, ghost of the warm, smoky breath and the way Giles had smiled at it. Ripper had smiled, and fucked Ethan raw so as to hide that Giles had heard.

And disagreed.

But Ethan only ever lost touch with the parts of Giles he never cared much for anyway. Still there enough to pluck this one secret away from him and put it on display for the rest of the world. This boy, this mistake of epic proportions with his smart mouth and too-old eyes. This boy he'd never reconciled within himself, the conflicting urges to protect and love and to destroy and remake into something he could never love.

Ethan inside him more and more now and Giles is beginning to feel himself fade. He's scrabbling at the spell now, using the equivalent of his fingernails to get through the frictionless steel door of Xander's hallucinated need.

-- coils of power, sea-like and strange and sweet that caress and scour and tease --

"Oh Giles, please" from at his feet, cracking hoarse and the words echo too many fantasies and he knows Ethan has him now.

Ethan baiting the trap with Xander's needy musk rising high on the air and slipping in and in like he'd never let him before, slipping in while Giles tried to free the lamb.

He has time to wonder why he didn't simply snap the bastard's neck when he had the chance... and then everything is cinnamon.

*

There is a moment, a kind of thunderous black silence -- hot, dark and huge -- where Ethan sees his victory.

He feels a little like a spider, even though the metaphor is pat and something more modern would probably be more... apt. He feels... Janus, but the dark is lovely. Not a spider, but a king, wonders laid before him: the red-haired Witch riding a maelstrom of magic force; a Slayer and a Soldier on a distant battle field, awash in mud and blood and legions of the mindless soulless dead (interspersed with the occasional innocent child so tut, tut, mind that sword swipe...) He has to laugh. It's wet. Rupert's broken something in his face (real face) but it's too far away to feel and he doesn't care.

Honestly he doesn't.

And the werewolf, in his forest, in his... what the *hell* is that anyway? Nothing Ethan's made. All the boy's own twisted, teenwolf imagination. And who knew but the quiet ones were always the most poetically perverse. That lush forest/vagina... *whatever*. Some viny Venus flytrap version of the little witch? Ethan's laughing so hard now tears are coming.

Tears are coming. Leaking down the left side of his face, aching to pool in the bone-dry socket under the patch. Wheezing laughter, ribs aching because *Rupert*... oh god, it's too too funny. Rupert, scrabbling to get *in* to the hex...

And now there he is, trapped and lost like a bloody civilian... And Ethan has to stop to *breathe*. Wipe his cheeks, his nose with the back of his hand. Catches a glimpse of how wet and dark it comes away in the real. Which kills the laughter like water on a brazier. Leaves something as bitter as sodden ash behind. Because there is Rupert. There is Rupert, bent over the writhing boy-shaped specter. So gentle, hand on the forehead he thinks he sees, brushing away sweat, tears. Murmuring a name.

If he let himself, Ethan could be there, right there with him. That's a piece of *his* soul after all, that thing that Rupert is soothing, lips to forehead so gentle and brotherly. /Oh no, Ripper, don't you dare think you can get away with brotherly. This is *me* you've wandered into. I *know* you. I *know* how thin this 'oh so gentle Giles' really is. Do you think I've done the same as you? Pretended to forget?/

And just the word 'forget' conjures up the visceral scrape of brick against his cheek, the pounding huff-huff-huff of Ripper in his ear, the knife-edge pain of a raw fuck that always made him come too fast.

"Oh yes, you *are* a gentle soul... "

And, tuned as it is to whipcord skeins of power, the boy-shaped ghost arches up under Giles, translucent hands coming up to refute any vestige of 'brotherly'. And oh, Rupert, Rupert... so much anguish in those eyes and it only serves to make the fall that much lovelier. Rupert falls like a Doric column breaking, piece after piece, inevitable -- his body moving against that ghostly heat, knee sliding up between those spreading thighs, one hand roving flat, floury young flesh under some imaginary sweater, the other cups a neck as he leans down finally to taste the waiting kiss...

Hand around his ankle and Ethan jumps about a mile in the air.

Wrenched away from lips that were, for the first time, coming down on him with softness --

//he'd fallen *in*, Christ hadn't meant to fall *in* like that//

-- and he glares down, humiliated ragee flooding him with the need to lash, and finds -- he-llo. It's Mr. Alexander Harris. Belly to the ground, half-naked, eyes like big shiny chocolate candies. Well, how *lovely*... Xander gazing up at him, sweating and dazed. Ethan feels the hex, butter suede and electricity, even through his clothes. He knows the boy can't actually see him as more than... what? He pauses to take a look inside, but Xander makes it unnecessary.

"Please, where did he go?"

The teasing Giles-shade is gone, lost when he had been... lost. He hadn't tied it off, he'd forgotten, lost control and there's something old in him. Something old and pleased at the lesson the servant has been given.

No one can control chaos forever, sooner or later it takes you, too. The lesson all disciples learned, one way or another... but this was only a minor slip, and Ethan still has the reins.

Yes.

Laughter in his head, the wizard tittering behind the chair of the king and he rips himself back *to* himself. To the boy.

Ethan crouches down, allows the hand (he can feel the heat and damp of the boy's palm) to remain where it is.

"Where did who go?"

Wet lick over full, chewed lower lip, and aborted attempt to shake off the nudging of the hex for at least long enough to find his answers, but he fails of course. Ethan watches Xander lose himself to his beloved lawn for a while before grabbing the boy by the hair.

He lowers the register of his voice until he can feel it thrum in synch with the hex: "Who left you here, child? All alone?"

"Ohhhh... please don't... please don't stop it was Giles, he left me, he left... he was going to..."

The boy's shudders travel up Ethan's arm. He's moving his head within Ethan's grip, now. Trying to get flesh to contact flesh, forgotten hand spasming lightly on his ankle. "To what, you pathetic little slut? Give you what you deserve?"

"It hurts, please, don't say... I'm not --"

Ethan's grin is back, and he's heedless of the hot wetness spilling down his cheek at the stretch, heedless of everything but the boy and his desperation. It's almost too much, deciding what word to use, what punishment to give, but in the end it's quite simple:

"More."

"Oh *God*--"

Anguish now, pure and complete, and Xander rips several of his own hairs loose struggling against it. With it and this... this is familiar. The boy's face not so different not so --

//Ripper, *please* -- //

Ethan forces Xander to his trembling knees. Studies the boy's cock, dark with nearly too much blood, weeping steadily, endearingly grass-stained and he has to laugh again. *Has* to.

Has to lean in and lick the tears away in one long, rough lap and Xander is slipping into grunts and whimpers. Pleas without words.

Not good enough.

"What are you, boy?"

"I... I don't --"

One hard slap and Ethan watches hungrily as another load of pre-come dribbles over the head of Xander's cock. So easy, once you know the words.

"What are you?"

"I'm... oh please... oh god don't I'm a whore."

"Say it again."

"I'm a whore. Nothing... dirty... *please*..."

Oh, and there's nothing like watching an imaginative young man extrapolate. Nothing at all. "Do you want to know where Giles is, whore?"

Sweet, *sweet* brown eyes, vacantly needful and easily the most naked thing on the boy's body. "Yes, please tell me please I need --"

"Well, of course you *need*, Xander. But he doesn't need you. Or want you. Or give a damn about you, really, beyond the way your continued existence seems to please the others. You knew that, didn't you?"

Flash of an empty bed and the feel of his own face sinking into itself at the sight of a note and nothing pushes it back but the boy's sinking. Xander's ache visible in every line, every expanse of quaking, flushing flesh and Ethan doesn't lie to himself in this. Ethan knows he's simply fashioned himself a younger, prettier mirror.

Another quivering sack of needs to replace the one he seemed to have killed somewhere along the way.

Ethan brushes the boy's face gently, wiping the tears, focusing his power on cheeks, on lush mouth. "I'm the only one here, boy."

"... nothing..."

"Not to worry, though, I'll give you what you need."

Ethan strips himself slowly, savoring the feel of blood-stained silk sliding over bruises, of his hands on the belt that, perhaps, would be used later. He lets it fall to the grass and watches Xander shiver. Steps out of his pants and watches Xander refocus himself keenly. Ethan hasn't bothered with underwear since he'd learned what effect the lack had on people.

"You know what to do, don't you, Xander? From your dreams, I mean."

Xander moves the last few feet closer, never bothering to leave his knees. At first the boy only stares, trembling. Licking his lips over and over, heedless of the way his own hips thrust so hungrily at the air. It's a curious sight... no one else under this particular spell had ever paused when offered release. Not without a direct order.

Had Xander had *any* experience with men? The thought thrilled through him and in the end, he simply grabbed the boy by the back of the head.

"Please... you don't have to... you don't have to be mean --"

And when Ethan nudges the boy's lower lip with the head of his cock he is welcomed immediately, Xander's eyes rolling up in his head slightly, Xander's drool making the way even slicker. For a moment he considers simply holding the boy still and spending himself in his virgin throat.

For a moment he considers simply leaving the tableaux as they stand -- Buffy and Riley, back to back and slashing the air with twigs, Willow casting spell after spell within the chaos bubble, bleeding her power into Ethan's own, Giles making love to Xander, Oz... doing whatever it was he was doing with that plant -- and leaving the whole of it to wear off on its own.

Taking the precious boy, now lovingly, desperately fucking his mouth on Ethan's cock and... teaching him.

He pushes the boy aside, barely notices the way he falls, panting, to the ground. The staying and gloating had always done him in, and after all --

flash of white on white on white on buzzing fluorescent bearing down on him the doctors the tables the demands for petty parlor tricks and sorcerous weapons even he'd never used, would never use and in the end he was just a warlock and he'd merely had to lose an eye to give in to all the demands and in the black he can see he can still see still see the not-quite-weakened enough Xirac demon they've thrown him in with and he can see its yellowed bone claw and smell old, old death and he'd surrendered before -- he'd offered before -- he's a coward and they didn't need -- "*JANUS*!"

The pure scourge of chaos runs through him in hectic swamplight, illuminating everything in all the skewed shapes he saw them in, putting everything back into the wrong or right places and for a miracle all the spells are still intact.

Intact.

The price had been taken from something else, and Ethan will worry about that later.

He sweeps his gaze back to Xander and the boy has finally shed his ridiculous T-shirt. He is utterly nude, his right hand twisting a nipple cruelly while his left works his cock, fast and hard. Ethan hisses out a breath and simply watches the boy's hips snap up up up for a long, sweet moment. Sweet smooth flesh that the boy cannot satisfy without help.

And, yes... he could simply take him. Anywhere he wished, really.

Borrow him, train him. Have him. Have him until Xander was his without any spells at all... would it be so difficult?

No, probably not difficult at all. But what, then would he have accomplished? He'd have a boy -- oh yes, a pretty, needy boy who would love him and love him and take the punishment and hurt for him. Hand to his own cock, just a quick, nearly helpless stroke.

A boy whose likeness could -- *would* tempt him all the way across the bridge into darkness and he could with sudden vivid colour imagine a future where Xander wore his old whore's lame bellbottoms unzipped and peacock eyeshadow and chiffon scarves and died for him and lived for him over and over and always with that endearingly lopsided, baffled smile...

The one he was wearing now, mistaking, Ethan supposed, the want that surely showed on his face for something *good*.

"Would you like that, then? Would you like to be mine?" Xander gasps, the smile firming to a child's open-mouthed grin; head nodding in rhythm with his hand still working fast and helpless. "I promise you a living hell..."

Ethan watches the smile waver. /Oh *god*.../ Was this what it was like for you?

"Was it?" And he has to look at Ripper. *Rupert*. Really look at him, half-misted, tussling with his ghost boy, the two of them so close they must be melding, melting together. In all that tenderness. Fierce stab of jealousy throws him back to twenty-three. Pain he'd forgotten that he'd hoarded.

"Never." Anger: "I *never* was this tame, you bloody arrogant fuck. I fought..." /hissed, scratched, bit like a starved stray cat but still.../ "I fought. I..."

Closes his eyes. Eye. He can hear the boy's rough breathing.

"Come. Here." Scramble in the grass, sudden shuddering press of heat against his legs. He can smell the desperation but doesn't open his eyes. He can see just fine in the blind darkness inside his own head. Crouching down, he strokes the knobbed curve of back, goosefleshed haunch. Xander's skin shivers under his hands.

"That's right..." he says, mutters a soft incantation under his breath, feels the crackle of it rise up from the soil. Muscles bunch and shift under his hands. Flesh warms.

The frantic panting eases. "Wha--?"

"That's right..."

"Giles?" Confusion, the edges of a different, sharper panic.

Ethan chuckles softly.

"'Fraid not." Still stroking, Ethan lets one hand explore the shape of Xander's lean young ass. He can feel the brief, tense isometric struggle under his palms. "No! Wait... No!"

As he nestles himself behind and between Xander's thighs. The boy seems to have landed in just the right position for this, crouched like a cat, shoulders down, ass in the air. The high sharp stink of panic like crushed juniper is rising in waves off him.

"Oh *god*..."

He likes the way Xander's voice breaks high with real fear. The struggles inside the narrow confines of the binding spell get briefly more intense and Xander grunts.

"Careful, you could pull something." Hands wandering, thumb stroking down the cleft to find damp heat, tiny pucker. His other hand moving deeper, dipping between the shiveringly taut thighs to stroke past the tight velvet sac, cup the pulsing weight of Xander's -- /got you!/ -- still hard cock.

Xander makes a sound like a swallowed shriek. "You *fuck*," he pants. "You *fuck* get *off*."

"Oh come now," Ethan says, pushing the tip of his thumb inside, marveling at the tightness of a truly virgin ass. "Don't be a tease. You've been begging for it for hours."

"Not me. It wasn't *me*..." Trails off into a painful sounding sob. Angry, wet.

Ethan smiles.

"Now Xander, we both know that's a lie." Another swallowed scream, another stifled buck. And he was right, this is *so* much better. In the dark, just listening and feeling, he strokes Xander, twice, like he would have stroked himself and then withdraws his hand to do just that... He makes a cantrip motion and oil drizzles from his fingers, thick and warm as honey.

"And just because you've been so good," slipping his oiled thumbtip in and out, in and out with the rhythm of the words, meeting no resistance but that of untried flesh, "And let me say you have been. Very. Very. Good." Another strangled moan and he uses that to slide a little deeper with each new stroke. "Just because of that, Xander, I'm going to give you just exactly what you want."

"No."

"What you *really* want."

"No..."

"There's nothing you can do about it."

"N-no..."

"You can say 'no' as much as you need to."

"No...nno...Nn-no...oh..."

His thumb riding the boy now, his cock caught up in the slippery grip of the same hand -- fucking his thumb into Xander, the boy riding back on each thrust. On each breathy, strangled 'no'.

And god and gods he *had* been beautiful like this. Hips writhing, shamed whimpers. /always shamed with Rupert, not by his shamelessness -- *that* was just and always his tooll -- but by his *need*. His.../spit it out, you pathetic little shit /... his love./ Oh God, poor old Rupert Giles. Who could have held... back...?

Slamming into his own hand hard enough to elicit a hissing grunt of pain from the shuddering flesh below, his eye blinking open and oh, what a lovely rush to see... sweaty straining back, spread cheeks flushed rose... if only -- and here he has to catch himself. Hold up and tweak himself the way he knows will stop the rush to orgasm at the thought /if only I could reach my belt from here./

"Oh Xander," he gasps, half-laughing, slipping his thumb out of Xander's ass, and wiping sweat and crusted blood off his cheek with the back of the same hand before sliding the thumb into his own mouth to taste honey, oily sweet and the dark metal of innocence broached. /It just takes a taste to make an addict.../

"You know, this is the part where I'd really like to have something clever and memorable to say," Ethan says, lowering his hand, nudging his cock up to the sticking place. Relishing the strain and release of Xander making one last valiant try at just a smidge more than token resistance. "But honest to god, I can't think of a thing besides getting my cock up your arse. How about you? Any last words?"

Xander jerks, hisses something nearly soundless punctuated with a raspy breath -- impossible to make out, maybe not even words at all and Ethan finds he really *doesn't* care.

Just the sound of it is enough to send a shock of pleasure wiring up his cock. So much blood in there the skin feels glassine, membrane-thin and in self-defense he presses forward into tight, slick, oiled heat. Feels elastic flesh give slowly but give and give. Means to go slower but really, there's no stopping now is there? No, no, no stopping. Xander crying out a rising howl, back trying to bow, his whole body trying to stretch away from this terrible, unstoppable invasion...

And he is, abruptly, in. All the way in and gripping Xander's hips to force himself just that little bit deeper. Panting in the sudden quiet. Xander's howl has cut off, shattered into little rips of sound that brush at Ethan's senses like frayed wisps of resonance from the hex itself.

"Oh my," he says, blinking. Has to say it. It's so much better than he'd imagined it would be. Not that he hadn't had his share of blushing virgins... oh, but this is everything, isn't it? Dirty little secret unlocked. /You little prick, you make me feel like God/ He holds himself there, shuddering, relishing.

The feel and knowledge. The almost-painful grip around his cock, the ache of all his bruises healing unnaturally fast thanks to the sweet drain of Willow's power, Xander's hissing breaths -- the pulsebeat rocking of his hips. Oh lovely lovely *boy*.

"Go on," he whispers. "Go on, do it Xander. Fuck yourself. I won't tell a soul." Breathy whimper. "I won't tell a soul that it wasn't the spell."

And Xander pulls forward the fraction the binding spell allows, and Ethan thinks for a second that he's resisting and reflexively fits the shape of another hex in the hollow just between his tongue and teeth. But it's not resistance. It's not that at all.

And even knowing that he's God now and it's inevitable that his will be done, and even with all the prodding, all the sorcery, all the mindfucking he's been aiming it's still unexpected when Xander actually does it, fucking frantic and fast, shoulders straining as he tries vainly to get his hands anywhere near himself, ass moving like a hot, oiled glove around him, milking him violently.

And he rides with it. God it's fucking wonderful to do this, *be* this. *Getting* it finally, after all these years and he gets as close to loving Xander as the moment allows. Grabs the boy under the arms and hauls him upright, holds him tight /cold flesh against the hot bony hardness of his bruised chest/.

/Oh god, oh Janus, Ripper --/

Xander's head lolls against his shoulder, the smell of dirt and freshly sweaty hair, the grind like sheared silk against his collarbone and Xander's crying or maybe *he's* crying, blood-drip tears not salty enough at the corner of his mouth and he's so close takes Xander in his hand himself he's pulling fast and slick and doesn't understand why he's shooting in his hand even before the orgasm hits and he comes and comes and /Ripper you fucking bastard why didn't you ever.../ comes.

*****