"So, he's in England."
Rupert shot Jenny a look. Something about the way she'd said that sounded... well, odd. Sounded... skeptical and worrisome.
"He's visiting friends," Rupert said, frowning a bit.
"Wow, you men really are dense aren't you?"
Rupert's frown deepened, and he asked himself once again why exactly he'd voluntarily invited this woman into his home. Especially given that Ethan was not here to goad him into doing so.
"I beg your pardon?" he said.
"Ok, Rupert. You said you two have been weird since the whole prophecy thing. Now he's on an entirely different continent? Really not a good sign."
"That's ridiculous. It isn't as though he... slipped out in the middle of the night. He's vacationing, for god's sake."
"He's running."
"Nonsense," Rupert said, but even he wasn't entirely sure if some of his vehemence wasn't actually perhaps a bit of denial. That he'd been worried ever since Ethan bought those plane tickets.
"Look, I'm not saying he's leaving. Just that... he's already halfway there if he does decide to bolt."
Rupert leaned forward and set aside his scotch. The low-level murmur of doubt rose in volume, not yet a shout, but enough of a presence to be impossible to ignore. Doubt had been there ever since Quentin called him up to his office and said, "Congratulations."
Ethan had been gone for a week now, out of the four he planned to spend back home. It was already merely two days shy of the longest they had ever been apart since they'd met.
"Have you talked to him?"
"Of course I have."
For whatever good it did.
***
Hours later, he gave up on sleep and rolled quietly out of his far-too-empty bed, walked down the stairs in the dark, and found the card pinned to the corkboard with a number scrawled in pencil. He sat at his desk and dialed in the cool silence of predawn morning.
A continent and an ocean away, a phone rang, the sound coming back staticy with distance.
He counted rings, each one seeming more doom-laden than the last. But then, a click and a fumble, and Ethan's voice.
"Hello?"
The intensity of the relief at that voice surprised Rupert. The intensity of the desire was less of a shock, but still breathtaking.
"Ethan," was all he could find to say.
"Rupert?" Ethan said. "It's three in the morning."
"Yes," he admitted. "I-- I missed you."
There was a long pause. Then Ethan said, hesitantly, "Ah."
"It's... This flat is terribly quiet without you here."
"Ah," Ethan said again.
Rupert shut his eyes. Once he'd been willing to give this all up for Ethan. To walk away from his destiny, from the world, from the Slayer.
He couldn't now. Not anymore.
But then Ethan spoke again.
"This whole bloody country is quiet without you."
And then Rupert could breathe again.
"Come home, Ethan? Please?"
*Come to me. I can't come to you.*
***
Three days later, he met Ethan at Sunnydale Regional.
The End
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