tarnished -- part three -- trekker |
Chapter Two | |
Weird Love Is Better Than No Love |
Buffy left late that night, and Giles tiredly went through his nightly routine after putting away the maps and books. They would be heading in, hopefully, within the next week with a force of Slayers, to face an army of demons in the evacuated ruins of LA. It sounded, more than anything, like the plot of a ridiculously bad movie.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair and then headed out into the bedroom. It was dim, lit only by the bedside lamp on Ethan’s side.
Ethan was already in bed, paging through one of Giles’ paranormal studies journals. He didn’t look up from it until after Giles had climbed in under the covers, when he tossed it aside and reached for the light. Giles rolled onto his side towards him and said his name, stopping his hand before it could reach the switch.
“Yes?” Ethan said.
Giles reached for him, but hesitated before touching him. He wasn’t sure quite how his touch would be received.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” Ethan said.
Of course not, was more the truth.
“I’m sorry. Buffy can be... oddly possessive at times.”
“Ah,” Ethan said, “Yes, I’d noticed.”
“And her... views tend to be a bit... black and white.”
Except where her own lovers were concerned... but no, he wasn’t going to get into thinking like that. And perhaps she wasn’t entirely wrong. Only a few months back, a Slayer had been killed under a set of very odd circumstances in Egypt. Giles had confronted Ethan about the incident, with his own interpretation of the events already firmly entrenched in his mind.
Ethan had simply walked out. For almost a month.
It was, as it turned out, unlikely that Ethan had been involved, but he’d never gotten a definitive truth out of anyone.
Still, there were times when Giles wondered what the hell he was doing.
Now was not one of those times. Now, Ethan looked too good, backlit by the lamp, shirtless, possibly naked under the covers. Gone for two weeks and finally back. Two weeks during which the bed had been cold, the flat had been too empty, there’d been no one to talk to, cook with, to complain about work to, to insult idiotic television shows with.
No one to make love to.
He let his hand slide across the last few inches of cool sheets to touch Ethan’s warm arm.
Buffy had asked if he loved Ethan, and he’d said he wasn’t sure. That wasn’t true. He knew. In moments like this one, his hand settled in the crook of Ethan’s elbow, Ethan’s blazing gaze on him, he knew perfectly well that he was in love. And though there were times during the day when he could be all but paralyzed with the doubt and the problems and all the reasons why he shouldn’t, in moments like this, it only felt good and right and simple.
He hadn’t said the words, yet, and neither had Ethan. He wasn’t even entirely sure *what* Ethan’s position on this was, though he suspected it was the same as his own--love but with logical reservations. This was all right. He could wait, Ethan could wait. For now, they were here, together, and that was all that really mattered.
“So,” Ethan said, as he rolled up to his side. “We’re going to LA, then?”
“We?” Giles said, though this wasn’t completely a surprise. He shifted and curled his arm around Ethan’s back.
“Well, if you go alone, you might die. Can’t have that.”
Facetiously phrased though this was, it still warmed Giles a bit. He smiled and said, “Oh no?”
“All the trouble I went to to seduce you would be wasted if you died now.”
“Ah, if that what all that was?”
“All part of the plan.”
This, for some unfathomable reason, inspired one of those little, ridiculous, absolutely wonderful surges of “god, I’m in love,” and Giles grinned and leaned up to kiss Ethan, a quick tangle of lips, and then they parted.
“Besides,” Ethan said, “I want to see the look on your Slayer’s face when you tell her I’m coming along.”
“Ah. Yes, that... should be interesting.”
tarnished -- part three -- trekker |