London 1978
"You lost, mate"
Rupert Giles looked up as the mocking voice startled him out of his reverie.
"No, I'm not lost. I know right where I am, mate." He scowled at the man, who was looking at him with an amused smile on his thin, dark-eyed face.
The smile widened.
"No need to go all defensive on me there, mate. You do sort of stick out, you know?" He waved his hand at the crowd that surrounded them.
"And what business is it of yours if I do? You the posh police?" Giles lowered his voice to that belligerent edge that drove his father into a frenzy for some reason, hoping it would intimidate the man into leaving him alone.
To his surprise, the man just chuckled.
"Nice growl you've got there." He hooked out a chair with his foot and sat down, signaling the waitress for two pints.
"My name's Ethan Rayne, by the way. Nice to meet you"
Giles continued to glare, trying to cover the stab of insecurity he felt; he didn't know how to deal with someone like this. He had run away from University and the destiny his father had decided was his, burying himself in the streets of London. He was aware that despite his best efforts his clothing and accent still marked him as not from the streets, but usually the attitude he wore like a shield kept anyone from getting close enough to really notice just how much he really didn't fit in. With Ethan it just seemed to provoke a mild amusement. The waitress brought over two pints of ale and Ethan pushed one at him, managing somehow to not slop it over the rim.
"Cheers, mate. Drink up"
"I'm not your mate. I don't even know you." Giles muttered sullenly.
"Well then, perhaps if you tell me your name I won't call you that anymore. Come on, I did buy you a drink, least I can get is a name." Ethan raised an eyebrow at him and his voice was like being bathed in warm velvet.
Giles cupped the glass in his hands and considered. Granted, he had not been on the streets that long, but it was long enough to have had one close brush with the predators in the area and he wasn't eager to willingly fall into the clutches of another one. Still, it was one drink, not enough to get drunk on, much less disabling so. One thing no one had told him about the deprivation of living in a tiny shack of a room, eking out a living with odd jobs, was that it was often accompanied by crippling loneliness. He decided to go ahead and take a few chances.
"Rupert Giles. Thanks for the pint"
"Well now, that wasn't so hard was it? Rupert, hmm? You know, that name doesn't suit you in the slightest. With that attitude and the way you tried to kill me with your eyes? I think I'll call you Ripper instead"
"Ripper?" Giles laughed a little, his father would abhor the name, that fact alone made him like it. "Yeh, that'll do"
"So, Ripper, got a place to stay?"
Ethan had been watching the newcomer for days before approaching him. Despite the efforts the lad had been taking to try and fit in he stood out on so many ways he could not erase. When he did not deliberately think about his accent it became much more refined, and he threw about polysyllabic words like cheap coins in a part of the city where the inhabitants more often spoke in sullen grunts and nods. And the ways he moved and held himself, obviously not a man of the streets who looked up only long enough to see where he was going.
No, the boy strode through the streets with his head held high, trying with jutting jaw and glaring eyes to warn people from intruding on his alienness. And to most people, it was not worth it to intrude. They had their own little lives and livings to eke out, no need to go looking for challenges that wouldn't bring food to the table.
But Ethan was different, he liked a challenge, and one look at the days he'd spent watching had told him everything he needed to know. Despite his arrogant exterior inside he was just another half neglected rich boy trying to prove how different he was from his father. Ethan would be able to use praise and admiration to pet and coax him into doing almost anything.
Well, the boy wanted to be a rebel did he? Ethan decided to show him what rebellion could really be.
He couldn't possibly imagine he'd actually end up liking the him.
Ethan brought Ripper into his world slowly. Teaching him the places not to be in Crouch End, introducing him around and offering him a place to stay when Ripper couldn't pay for his small tenement lodging anymore. Ethan had become his companion, and then his friend. Once he liked and trusted Ethan it had seemed only natural to introduce Ripper to Ethan's true passion in life.
Dark magic.
"How long have you been doing spells, then"
Ethan smiled at the question. He had a way of responding to almost anything Giles said with a sort of dark amusement that half drove Giles to admiration and half to ruddy annoyance. There seemed to be nothing he could say that was met with anything other than this façade.
"When I was fourteen I nipped a magic tome out of a bookshop in the waist band of my trousers. I've been experimenting ever since." He chuckled, a sound Giles sometimes felt he lived for and yet loathed when it's edge was turned against him.
"'Course once I went and taught myself Latin it started to go a bit smoother. Apparently it's bad to mispronounce names in incantations. The results can be…interesting"
Giles considered this, flipping through the nearest volume. He recognized the title as something his Watcher father would probably quite literally give a limb for.
"I know some languages. Maybe I can help sometime"
Ethan looked at him and nodded.
"Maybe you can at that. What say we invite some others over this weekend and give it a go? I know just the spell"
He flipped the pages in the volume Giles was looking through to a particular page pointed to a word.
"Eyghon? What's that?"
"Right then, let's have a look." Giles walked around the circle Deirdre had drawn on the wooden floor with poster paints.
"I think I've finally got this last bit right. It was a bit tricky with that marking like a Celtic knot, those are always a bit rough to get symmetrical when you enlarge them." She put her brush back in the paint can with a smile.
Giles looked over the design with a critical eye, then smiled back at her. "I think you're right. Why don't you get Ethan and the others and we'll start." Giles could feel the tension humming in his muscles, the mix of eagerness and fright making his hands tremble slightly. His father and the rest of the Watcher's Council had always tiptoed around the supernatural, too cowardly to experience it. Giles wanted to live it, invite it in and revel in it. The only frightening part of preparation for the ritual had been the tattoos. Tattoos that had to be drawn on with archaic tools of bamboo splinters that were tapped with hammers. Far more painful than a tattoo with an electric needle, the herbs used in the ink burned under the skin for hours.
He stood on his quarter of the circle with his part of the spell written out on a piece of paper clenched in his hand. For this first time they had chosen Philip to be the focus of the spell. Giles felt envy twisting in his stomach as he watched. He wanted to be the person to invite Eyghon in. His turn would come.
Ethan lit the candles and scattered the herbs the spell called for. Deidre started the chanting, reading aloud the words Giles had translated into phonetic English.
Round and round they chanted, the room growing dark and still. Philip dropped into a deep sleep as they called to Eyghon, calling him into Philip.
Giles felt an atavistic chill crawl up his spine as Eyghon responded and Philip opened his eyes.
The next few weeks passed in a blissful blur for Ethan. The spell was even better than he had hoped. After Philip opened his eyes and spoke to them as the demon, they had all clamored for their turn. Philip told them he remembered everything that happened, but at the same time holding the demon within him had been an incredible high Like nothing he'd ever experienced before.
Ethan let Ripper have his turn next. The demon had taken him and afterwards there had been the exchange of a shy kiss and fumbling caresses in the dark. Ethan delighted in waking up next to Ripper and turning the awkward experience in the dark into serious explorations in the daylight.
Deirdre was next, and she left quickly with Randall after the ritual, disturbed by the experience but promising to come back the next night so the others could still have their turns.
And then it was Ethan's turn. Laying in the middle of the pattern the chanting had lulled him despite the nervous energy that was singing through his veins, sending him with inexorable pressure into slumber. He felt Eyghon slide into him like oil seeping through his veins. The demon moved his limbs and spoke in his voice. It told the others answers to their questions while his brain sang with its power.
When the demon was driven back by the others, and he finally shut the door in his soul the creature had used to enter him, Ethan stumbled out of the circle with a grin of triumph and fell into Ripper's arms. He managed somehow to thank the others for helping before claiming Ripper's mouth with his own.
He heard the front door slam distantly, his head and ears still ringing with the power that had flowed through him during the ritual, and he knew that the others were gone, not only because of the door, but because Ripper stopped trying to bat his hands away and instead was allowing him to unfasten his clothes and had begun to kiss him back as eagerly as Ethan could want.
They were both still flying a little the next night when it was Randall's turn.
Neither of them knew how devastating the crash was going to be.