Title: Circularity
Rating: I can squint and call it PG13/FRT for mild language and implied sex.
Ships: Giles/Deidre, Giles/Ethan implied
Prompt: Circle OR triangle (I use both)
Words: 547
Author's Note: I don't do slash, I'm sorry. I know Giles/Ethan is practically canon, and I tried to write it, I really did. But my hands froze, and I could not type. I'm sure it would just end up awkward and stilted anyways. So the closest you're getting is Giles/Deidre with Giles/Ethan implied.
Disclaimer: checks mirror Still a hot female twenty-something. Not Joss.
Circularity
"You sure you wanna go through with this?" Ethan asked, voice full of skepticism. He leaned against the wall of the dingy flat, arms crossed, with the air of one expecting things to go hilariously awry at any moment. "Eyghon isn't for every wanker with piercings and leather who fancies themselves a mage. You've got to be strong. And you've got to be serious about magick."
"I can take it," Deidre replied cooly, though Ripper could sense the nerves in her voice.
He sat on the grungy tile floor of the sparsely furnished room with his legs out before him, one knee up, the other down. Deidre sat immediately in front of him, leaning against his knee in what might be described as a languid manner, though he knew she would be clinging to him for support once the pain started. He noticed her hands shake as she pulled her corn-silk hair to the side, leaving one shoulder bare. He wiped her skin with antiseptic.
"Ethan screamed like a little girl when he had his done," Ripper told her with a smirk, partly to make her feel better, but also to make Ethan twitch, which was always amusing. Even if it had been a lot easier ever since Deidre had joined their group.
When he'd met Deidre, she reminded Ripper of how he had been: new to the city, trying desperately to disguise the fact that she hailed from the better classes, searching for someone to thrill her. She hadn't even known enough to disappear after a one-night-stand, but had hung around the flat that Ripper shared with his gang the next day. Ethan kept at him to ditch her; and when he didn't the boy mocked Ripper, saying that he was getting soft, taking in young innocents and urchins. He was eager to get back to their magicks.
But Ripper had found something just as intoxicating. He introduced Deidre to the world of spells and demons, and watched her world be turned upside down. He taught her how to cast, how to do LSD, how to live on the street, and felt her mind being molded to his design, as easily as her body succumbed to his hands at night. There were moments when he thought that this was the same thing that the Council did, with Watchers like himself, with Slayers. But those thoughts were easily swept away by sex and drugs and magick.
Ethan was still bristling from Ripper's slight. "Yeah? Well it's nothing to how you scream when Eyghon--"
"Hey!" Ripper's head snapped up, eyes flashing angrily. "You gonna cram it an' let me do this or do I have to shut you up?"
Now it was Ethan's turn to smirk. "Go on. Try it."
A warning glare was his only response, and it had no impact whatsoever. So Ripper just turned back to Deidre. He kissed her shoulder, feeling the tension in her muscles relax as though on command. He switched on the tatoo needle before saying in a low voice, "You won't scream, will you?"
The girl turned to him with the wicked look of those new at giving them. "Not unless you want me to."
Ripper smiled, and began by drawing a circle onto her skin.
