He wakes somewhere in the night, at that fulcrum between late and early. Rupert sleeps beside him, his breath clicking softly each time he inhales. Ethan sits up quietly, hanging his legs over the side of the bed, feeling the shock of the cool floor on his feet. He looks back.
A band of light falls through the curtains and curls around Rupert's shoulder. There's a shimmer of scar tissue.
He remembers how it feels, raised and smooth.
Instinct, habit, drives him to his feet, takes him through the motions of dressing quietly enough to not wake him. After he's finished, he's not even entirely sure why he did it.
Giles asked him to stay.
He stands, still and silent. Sleep tugs at him, and the warmth of the bed calls to him. There's still an echo of Ripper's body against his own jittering in his nerves.
He needs a cigarette.
He shuts the door softly behind him as he leaves.
His feet carry him along a street that shines with rain, through heavy velvet air that smells like the city. He can still taste Ripper on the back of his tongue.
The river to his right looks like the street to his left. Black and shining and empty. He walks to the river and stops at the railing, stands there and lets the wind blow over him, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his trench coat.
The lights of London shimmer on the water like the stars that are invisible above.
This is his world, he thinks. Deep night. It's a different universe. Not silent, but nearly, compared to the rush of the day. He can feel night-magic filling his veins, sparking along his nerves.
He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Draws the smoke in deep and holds it. And even this, even after years, still reminds him of Ripper. Rupert.
Still asleep back in that flat, naked and curled under tousled sheets and looking thirty years younger than he ought to.
He lets his breath out and watches the pale smoke curl in the air, hanging in delicate loops and swirls.
It started years ago, at a pub here in England. Slayer dead, and Rupert drunk. A few times, then, really, almost becoming a routine. They'd meet in that pub. Spend a night fucking. Fall asleep under different roofs the next morning. Then the witch had called, and Rupert had vanished, back to that bright California town that sat on the mouth of Hell.
He came back, sooner than even Ethan expected, and after that, it never really ended.
Their paths crossed and re-crossed, woven like the double helix of DNA.
The Watcher's Council fell to rubble, and the whole mystical world staggered in shock, and Rupert half-fell through his door two nights later. Ethan had never known a feeling like that before. Relief so powerful it burned him.
Rupert clung to him that night, came with Ethan inside of him. That night they were more desperate for each other's touch than they had since their very first time, when every caress had broken another link to their pasts, had been another step closer to freedom.
Ethan never wants to see him cry again.
Now there is more rubble. Sunnydale itself gone, wiped off the map. Idiotic newscaster, calling it a sinkhole. Rupert hadn't appeared for months after that. Not until tonight, when he'd been simply sitting at their table in the pub, as though the last time he'd been there--ragged and ancient and beaten down by jet lag and apocalypses and an overabundance of responsibility and adolescent females--had only been yesterday.
Ethan had known he was alive, at least.
Ethan sips at the cigarette, and the taste of tobacco and the taste of come bring back memories of a lifetime ago, of two boys with no purpose, no direction.
He wants to say he still is that boy.
But he's not sure he is.
Because tonight, when Rupert caught his arm and stopped him from pulling his shirt back on, when he looked up at him and said, "Stay."
Ethan did. Even though he had a sneaking suspicion Giles meant more than just for the night.
He stayed. For a while.
He's about to grind the cigarette out on the railing and move on, when he hears a scuff on the pavement behind him. He can feel Ripper's magic, swirling sluggishly damp air. Green electricity, metallic and acrid. Very subtle, but he's attuned to it, the same way he recognizes his scent, the taste of his kiss.
"I... hoped I'd find you here," Rupert says, and comes up behind him.
"Needed a smoke," Ethan says.
"Ah," Rupert says, and then he's close and warm along Ethan's back. A moment later, his arms are around Ethan, pulling him back against him.
When they were young, they did this to shock people. Ethan would bat his lashes and Ripper would call him darling. It was a joke, a game.
There's no one watching now.
Ethan stands rigid in the embrace. Rupert's chin rests on his shoulder, a sharp point, uncomfortable. He wants to tell him to move, but that would require breathing, and Ethan feels that moving now would be unwise. Stillness seems safer.
Giles can breathe, though, and does, drawing in a long deep breath and then letting it out in a sigh that sounds content. Then he turns his head, nuzzles his face against Ethan's neck. Hot breath in contrast to the cool night, and a series of warm kisses, from Ethan's shoulder up to his ear.
He feels as though he's been bound with a spell, wants to move, but can't.
Until the cigarette burns down and bites his fingers and he has to flinch and toss it away, and then somehow he's out of Ripper's arms and they're facing each other. In the dim glow of a distant streetlight, Rupert looks amused as Ethan curses, shaking his hand.
And then they are silent and solemn and looking at each other.
"What is this?" Ethan says, finally.
"What it's always been," Rupert says. "You and I."
"I'm no housewife, Rupert."
And Ripper smiles.
"God knows I don't want a wife, Ethan."
Ethan scowls. "Pitiful attempts at humor aside, you know that isn't what I meant."
"Yes."
Now the night wind is cold, and his throat is damp from Rupert's kisses, cooling in the breeze and raising goose bumps. The discomfort of the chill raises his irritation a notch higher.
He snaps, "Then what--"
"Wander all you want," Rupert says, and he's taking a step closer, "Just promise you'll come back to me. Now and again."
"I always have," Ethan says, and he doesn't mean it the way it might sound, like it came off a greeting card. It is simply a fact. Always has been. Always will be.
"I know," Rupert says, and now he's close, almost touching him.
Ethan waits until he can almost feel the electricity of his fingers, crackling across the space between them in the damp air, then he pulls away, steps back and leaves a chasm between them. The look of hurt in Rupert's eyes is almost a relief.
He stands for a moment, watching Rupert, drinking his fill of the man, and then he turns and walks away, down along the river.
He knows he's out of earshot when he says, low and under his breath, speaking only to the ears of the night:
"Be seeing you."