FIC: Loose Ends (Gen) PG

[ripper-repoman.livejournal.com]

Title: Loose Ends
Characters: Rupert Giles, Ethan Rayne
Rating: PG
Setting: BtVS, set sometime between S4 and S5
Disclaimer: BtVS and all characters/concepts © Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions.
Warnings: Just a little swearing.
Notes: I've never successfully written Giles/Ethan fic or anything similar. I thought I'd give it a try since I love their relationship, but it didn't turn out how I hoped it would. Oh well, hope you like regardless!

When Giles first hears the knock, two thoughts run through his head.

The first thought is that it’s well past midnight, so who on earth would be knocking on his door at this ungodly hour?

The second thought is, well, it’s not anyone he knows because whoever is at the door actually bothered to knock in the first place.

Giles doesn’t care who it is. He has half a mind to tear the door open with a battle-axe in hand, just to scare them away, but he’s much too tired. It’s late. They’ll probably go away in a few minutes.

Whump.

Giles sits bolt upright, heart pounding. That sound was most certainly not a knock, but rather sounded like someone had thrown their entire weight at the door.

He resigns himself to yet another restless night, and wearily goes downstairs, tugging a shirt over his head as he does.

The door stays silent. Perhaps they’ve gone.

But Giles knows his conscience won’t accept that as an answer, so he sighs, puts on his glasses, and opens the door.

Only to yelp and leap backward in alarm as a body keels over and lands at his feet.

Well, this was entirely unexpected. Giles tries to think clearly about the situation.

Someone has collapsed on his doorstep.

Someone has collapsed on his doorstep and, like it or not, that’s Giles’ problem now. He wishes bitterly that he didn’t care about these kinds of things and could be callous enough to just kick the body outside and go back to bed. But he knows he couldn’t let himself think that way, so with another resigned sigh, he rolls the body over to see if the person in question is still alive.

His breath catches in his throat. He nearly falls over from shock.

Lying on the floor of his flat, face bruised and bloodied but unmistakable regardless, is none other than Ethan bloody Rayne.

Bugger.

By all rights, Giles knows he should just toss the chaos sorcerer back outside. Ethan has certainly caused enough trouble to earn that treatment. But when Giles looks back down at his old friend, the sight of the bruises, the split lip, the small array of cuts spiderwebbing down his face, he lets that train of thought crash and instead, grabs his friend under the armpits and drags him over to the sofa.

Empathy has always been Giles’ weakness, hasn’t it? Even with old enemies.

If Ethan could be classified as an “enemy.” Of course, in light of recent events, he didn’t quite count as a “friend” either, now, did he?

Regardless, Ethan has just toppled, bloody and unconscious, into Giles’ flat and now Giles knows that this is his loose end to tie.

He hates loose ends.

He was glad when he’d thought the Initiative had taken care of this one, but clearly, they hadn’t taken good enough care of it, in more ways than one.

Giles pulls out some towels and bandages out of habit. As he passes the medicine cabinet, his hand hovers a little too long over the bottle of Scotch he has stowed there. He reluctantly comes to the conclusion that he’ll need his mind clear and ready for implausible denials and explanations, just in case Buffy comes hurtling through his flat door with yet another ill-timed query on the latest demon problem.

He hates having to explain things to his Slayer, too, especially since she never seems to want to do the same for him.

Ethan is still unconscious when Giles returns, and by now, he’s gotten bloodstains all over the couch and carpet. He doesn’t even have to be awake, Giles thinks ruefully. He’s still managing to be a pain in the arse.

Giles steels himself for the sight of whatever injuries Ethan may have sustained, but when he gently pulls the shreds of his old friend’s shirt (he dearly hopes that the shirt had been red to begin with), the grotesque portrait of wounds is still difficult to stomach.

He doesn’t think too hard about what he’s doing or why – he just concentrates on how he’s doing it. He applies bandages and occasionally uses a towel to slow the sluggish bleeding: the assorted mechanical movements Giles has gotten so used to doing. He knows what to do when confronted with an unconscious body, and how to stop the bleeding and prevent infection and whatever else. He just has to concentrate very hard on not thinking about who he’s helping.

He can’t help but wonder fleetingly what he could possibly say if Buffy came in, and demanded to know exactly why he was keeping in his flat an injured chaos sorcerer who had, by his own admission, nearly gotten them all killed on several occasions.

Especially since Giles isn’t too sure himself.

Giles can think of one or two faintly plausible reasons, but they would entail exploring a particularly dark alleyway just to the left of his memory lane, and he would prefer not to visit those...certain memories. He briefly wonders what Buffy would have to say about those certain memories, and promptly stops wondering about it when he pictures her reaction.

Before he knows it, he’s cleaned the last cut and is left kneeling at the foot of the sofa, with far too much time on his hands to dwell on what the bloody hell he is doing.

If that’s not his cue to go and get himself really sodding drunk right this minute, he doesn’t know what is. It’s harder to think about those kinds of things if the mind is saturated with alcohol, too drowsy to be nostalgic and too hazy to consider moral gray areas.

Giles stands, wincing as his cramped and aching knees stretch their stiff muscles. But before he can so much as shift in the direction of the medicine cupboard, he hears a low, gruff cough behind him. Heart in his throat, he turns.

Ethan is awake.

Giles waits for the usual slow, smug grin and the knowing wink that Ethan always likes to pitch at him, but it never comes. No, Ethan looks alarmed to be there, secure in his old friend’s flat with his wounds treated and bandaged.

The Watcher stands perfectly still, holding his breath. Ethan hasn’t noticed him yet. He’s too busy inspecting the gauze and tape sealing his injuries shut with wide, confused eyes. When he finally does lift his head to examine the room around him, he looks just as surprised when he sees Giles. This isn’t the expression that usually accompanies his taunting exclamations of alarm, either. Ethan seems genuinely taken aback to be alive – and, oddly enough, he seems...grateful of the fact.

Since when has Ethan ever been grateful?

This incredibly peculiar night has managed to get even more peculiar, and Giles desperately wishes that Ethan will faint or collapse or go back to sleep so that he can go and get drunk and pretend that the whole thing was just some Scotch-sodden nightmare.

But he doesn’t.

Giles stands and tersely awaits some smart, sharp-edged remark regarding his crippling compassion for others.

“You did this?” Ethan asks. He sounds strangely astonished, his voice unaccompanied by its usual sardonic edge.

Giles nods.

“You did this.”

Another nod.

Tense silence. Then:

“Thank you.”

Giles still expects Ethan to fire off his usual ramble about how he knew that the Ripper was in there somewhere. He hasn’t had a recent conversation with Ethan without that popping up at some point, and he has a vehement denial stashed at the tip of his tongue for if and when it comes.

So Ethan’s next question takes him completely off guard.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any brandy, would you?”

“Ah...no.” He hesitates, considering...

Oh, what the hell.

“But I do have Scotch.”

Giles doesn’t wait for a reply. He pulls out the dusty bottle and two tumblers, pouring one halfway full and handing it to the still-horizontal Ethan. He tries to sit up properly, but winces several times before he manages it.

“If you poison my drink, I’m killing you, understand?”

Ethan laughs, but cringes as he does so, and wraps an arm around his ribs. Giles recalls seeing bruising there.

“You all right?”

“No,” the sorcerer answers dryly. “Those Initiative fellows are quite ignorant of us sorcerers. Kept thinking I was some sort of shape-shifting demon. Cut me and burned me all over for no bloody reason.” He toasts his old friend, a bitter smirk creeping across his bruised face. “Needless to say, we didn’t get along.”

“But you got out.”

“I did. I almost didn’t. Came straight here.”

“How’d you manage it?”

“Teleportation spell. Hence the nosebleed.” Ethan waves at his face nonchalantly. Giles remembers seeing the trickle of blood oozing from his nose, but he had thought it had been just another Initiative-inflicted injury.

“I didn’t think you could pull that off.”

“Neither did I. Had to try, though, didn’t I? It was that or get vivisected for all eternity, or something along those lines.” Ah, there was the old Ethan humor: wry and derisive, and oddly nice to hear again.

“And you chose to come here, of all places,” Giles continues quickly, before Ethan can glimpse the tiny smile that his last comment had coaxed from him. “Why?”

“Honestly?” Ethan drains his glass. “First place I thought of. Well, person, anyway.”

“Person?”

“You.”

Ethan’s stare is unusually direct and uncomplicated. No lies, no deceit, no sly attempts to goad the Ripper into emerging.

It’s a little frightening, actually.

Giles finds himself not knowing what to do in response, so he busies his hands by pouring Ethan another glass of Scotch. He refrains from pouring more for himself, and sets his own tumbler on the table instead.

Ethan shifts a little on the couch and hisses with pain, clutching at his side again.

“You doing all right?”

“Feel like I’ve been run over,” grunted Ethan resentfully.

“I...well, I’m not sure if you’re disinclined to take painkillers, but I do have – ”

“Get them.” Ethan’s face screwed up in pain. “Alcohol’s not quite enough to numb this, I’m afraid.”

Giles nods and heads back to the medicine cabinet for the third time that evening. He should have suspected something wasn’t quite right with Ethan’s request for such soft drugs (not that Ethan is averse to drugs in general, Giles recalls with slight chill), but he’s tired and too many strange things have happened tonight for him to discern one odd occurrence from the next.

So he’s only surprised for a split second when he returns to the sofa, only to discover that Ethan has vanished.

It isn’t especially alarming, given the chaos sorcerer’s track record. He’s always had a knack for appearing in the most unexpected places and fading away at the most unanticipated moments.

Giles returns the pills to the cabinet, giving himself only a slight pause to assess and accept the situation.

As quickly as he had come, Ethan is gone from his life again, and Giles doesn’t have clue as to when and where he’ll turn up next.

Ethan’s like that. He’s always been like that.

But oddly enough, Giles finds that at the moment, he doesn’t quite mind.

No, he doesn’t mind at all.

Maybe this loose end will tie itself this time.