Title: One Thing or the Other By: Jessica Harris Rating, pairing, and other fun stuff : NC17. G/E. 1/1 Spoilers: vague ones for A New Man - this takes place more or less right after it. Notes: Hello - I'm jessica. I write mostly XF, and this is my first foray into Buffyland. Thanks to Spike for advice on it and for general spikeness. Well. I guess that's really all I have to say here, other than - hope you enjoy . Feedback is always welcome at lumpj@hotmail.com. =================================== One Thing Or The Other Jessica Harris ============================= //Maybe he's gone for good this time// thinks Giles, stripping off Ethan's ridiculous silver-streaked shirt with relief. It falls limply across his second-best brogues where they sit neatly by the door, and with a sound of disgust he scoops it up again and tosses it angrily into the corner. //For good//, he thinks again, but the thought doesn't soothe him the way he thinks it should. Ethan embarrasses him. Giles wishes he could feel something more profound; after all, he thinks, evil should properly be met with fear and loathing, with righteousness and rage. And he's attempted all of these reactions whenever Ethan reappears. But in the end what it always comes down to is this; this hot-faced, skin-crawling, anguished, resentful *embarrassment*. Even worse, he suspects that it’s not Ethan's putative evilness he's reacting to. It's the fact that, when he looks at Ethan through the children's shiny American eyes, what he sees is the most dreadful of old queens. The drawling voice, the affected mannerisms and clothes, the hair whose colour so clearly comes from a bottle… And it makes him feel *implicated*. He can't quite free himself from the tug of their old connections, and while the children, thankfully, haven't enquired too closely into the details of the past, he's sure they don't miss the all the insinuated intimacy of the way Ethan behaves around him. It makes Giles want to clutch at his tweeds and sensible brogues, all the hallmarks of normality that he's built into his life. Makes him want to hustle Ethan away from the childrens' sight, want to say to them - to himself - "It's not what you think. It was a long time ago. It wasn't really me. I'm not like him - not some pathetic ageing queen!" Though he also suspects that what truly fills him with resentment is that Ethan *isn't* pathetic. Not really. Ethan has never been afraid of anything he found inside himself, never been afraid to be anything that he is, however unpopular or embarrassing or *wrong* it might be. And this gives him power. More power than Giles has, these days. And sometimes that thought makes his tweeds feel scratchy and constraining, makes him want to shrug out of them and remember… Remember the old days. Things had been different then. The muscle- bound boys in the magazines he still wistfully buys sometimes don't move him the way that Ethan's strange, labile androgyny had. The old times had suited Ethan - he might have been born to wear glam, and he 'd done so unapologetically, all long hair and gold lame and eyeliner, striding along in his platform boots with a hip-swaying walk that was not quite a mince, not quite a swagger. Giles's own young Ripper-self had only seen the glitter and the mince and the hair at first, and had done what he 'd assumed it gave him the right to do - had thrown a rough arm across Ethan's shoulder one night outside the pub, pulled him round the back, and pushed him firmly to his knees. And Ethan had sucked his cock so prettily that Giles hadn't protested when he found himself, somehow, being led up the narrow stairs to Ethan's flat. Ethan had shucked off his jacket and shirt, and under it he'd been sleek and slender and bendable, his skin pale and smooth, his nipples pink as candy. And then, pulling Ripper down onto the bed, he'd taken the other man's hand and guided it to his fly, and when Ripper opened it, he found inside a cock that belied all of Ethan's apparent softness and pliability, that gave the lie to his girlish surface. Surprisingly large. Surprisingly *powerful*. In Giles's dreams of that night - and he dreams of it still - Ethan has more than two hands, more than one mouth. Sometimes he wonders if that had, in fact, been the reality - if he'd been ensorceled that night, ensnared. That smooth pale body had twined and twisted around him as if Ethan had no bones, touching him in ways that made him shiver and flinch and moan. And then he'd found himself on his hands and knees on the stained velvet coverlet with Ethan's cock pushing slowly into him. It had made the world spin around him - Ethan's soft, vaguely perfumed skin against him, his long hair hanging down so that it brushed both their shoulders, and then the terrible stretching inside of him, the way he'd felt himself being opened, being speared. It had made him cry a little, shameful rusty little tears, as though Ethan had found his way right to the secret softness inside of him that he'd tried so hard to hide behind his Ripper- self's swagger. And Ethan's own softness showing hard feral edges… "Poor baby, am I hurting you?" he'd cooed in Ripper's ear, without stopping or slowing or gentling his thrusts. "Poor baby. *Pretty* baby. You *are* pretty, you know. Prettier than you think." He'd licked the tears from Ripper's cheek then, stubbled chin rasping Ripper's own. It had panicked Giles, all of it, but he'd come anyway, exploding with a helpless cry when Ethan took his cock in his small sharp- nailed hand. His arms had given way then, and Ethan had grabbed his hips and held them in place until, with a last rough thrust and a wordless growl, he'd come too, and Giles had felt the heat of it inside of him like something there was dissolving. Chaos had found a perfect disciple in Ethan. He'd never been happy with rules, never been willing to be just one thing or the other. And with his soft skin and his hard cock and his magic he'd mixed it all up for Giles's Ripper-self, made all the boundaries meaningless - surface and shadow, male and female, good and evil. And oh, the playful, powerful, dangerous magic that had been born from that, in the days before the dying started. He wonders if this latest ridiculous prank was Ethan's last attempt to remind him of how that had felt... The years have carved sharp lines in Ethan's face, made him lean and stringy. He's no ephebe now, and he'll never again be mistaken for a girl. But some of that power is in him still, and it stirs things in Giles that he doesn't want the children to see. Ethan was never content to be any one thing alone, but somewhere along the way Giles has *chosen* - chosen to be good. To be right. To be sensible. And Ethan, with his annoying queeny ways, can still make that choice feel... small. Later that night, tense and sleepless, he stomps down the stairs, grabs Ethan's shirt from the corner and carries it back up to the bedroom with him. Then, looking over his shoulder as if someone might catch him, he smoothes the shirt out and hangs it at the back of his closet, behind the ranks of tweed. End.