These were mostly written for various Open On Sunday challenges; they're arranged chronologically in order of writing, with the most recent at the bottom.
Darkness and Dismay
Ethan remembered that voice like hot whiskey with honey and cloves and cyanide. Like the dusky orange of a London night sky. Like a dream of flight and falling. The voice had weathered, softened and roughed both, as had the face that went with it.
Change eats the past. There was no memory here untainted by time, no almost-presence unmarked by a lifetime's absence. There was nothing to be found or gained, standing in the room's darkest shadows, unnoticed by the man onstage.
"He's good," someone said. "Have you heard him before?"
"No." Ethan was glad the darkness hid his face.
Note: The inspiration for this was David Bowie's song "Lady Stardust," from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The title comes from a line in the song.
Linear B
Giles knew Ethan's body, his skin, his mouth, the hitch in his breath at the right touch. He knew nothing. Knowledge was lost in the abyss between twenty and fifty.
Ethan was a page in an unknown alphabet. Deciphered, he might be wisdom or banality, poem or prophecy or curse or household account. In decipherment, there's no telling in advance. The work must be undertaken on faith.
Giles thought of Linear B, which after all was only Greek, clear and familiar under an exotic shape. Perhaps with Ethan, too, would come that revelation, disclosing something Giles had understood all along.
Note: Linear B was the script used in Minoan Crete. It went undeciphered for years after archaeologists discovered it, until a clever young linguist figured out that the language Linear B encoded was a version of archaic Greek. After that, Linear B symbols could be associated with Greek characters and the texts became readable.
A New World I and II (for the Open on Sunday "alternate universes" challenge)
I. (London, 1980)
Ethan stands at Giles' door, looking pale, bony, too worn for his twenty-four years. As heartbreaking as the hollow-eyed waifs who'll pick your pocket on the underground.
Giles lets him in.
"I'm sorry," Ethan says, tongue stumbling like the words are foreign and he doubts his pronunciation. "Forgive me?"
The future transforms with a kiss tasting of ozone, metal, lemon peels, waxy honeycomb with sweetness underneath. A kiss that's all Giles ever had of his own.
It's all well lost—the world, the Watchers, the life he never wanted.
Joy is in his arms, and any price is a bargain.
II. (Sunnydale, 1998)
It's a laughable question from Anyanka, meant only to stay his hand. Of course the new world will be better.
Sunnydale's dead are too many to bury, and too dangerous; they're incinerated now. The survivors show only blank resignation, like cattle driven to the abbatoir.
His fighters, his child-soldiers with their inexhaustible, unbearable gaiety, are all gone now.
And he's alive still, with Ethan two years in the grave.
I want a better world, he thinks, smashing the jewel.
Fate lurches back to its origin, begins again. Ethan's knock goes unanswered, his kiss untasted.
Every wish must be paid for.
Small Victories
Finding this place has taken spells Giles never knew existed. Has taken weeks of preparation, an endless drive out to Nevada, a day-long hike in heat that punches him breathless.
It looks like any other bit of sun-parched earth.
Sweaty, thirsty, weary, he digs. The ground's baked to asphalt, but he doesn't have to dig deep for Ethan's bones.
This is what he wanted. To know Ethan would never come back.
Yet he clutches Ethan's skull to his chest, curls around it in the twilight. Ethan's owed something, a prize for winning after all, but he's too tired to weep.
Since the Last Time
(a ficlet for Sparklebutch)
Giles is never surprised to see Ethan. It's a natural law, akin to gravitation or magnetism. The earth revolves around the sun, the universe expands, bodies in motion stay in motion, and sooner or later, Ethan will turn up again.
"I see prison couldn't hold you," Giles says. Doesn't ask how Ethan found him here in London. Ethan always knows, always finds him. Doesn't ask what Ethan wants, because that's another natural law. Ethan wants to kiss him, or kill him, or both.
"Prison held me longer than I expected," Ethan says, stepping past him into the flat without waiting for an invitation. "Longer than you expected, too, I imagine."
There's a pattern to these encounters, and now the script calls for a beating. But Giles finds he's not in the mood. Without a hellmouth under his feet, without a Slayer to protect, without the world's weight bowing his shoulders, the urge to beat Ethan bloody is noticeably less. "Yes," he says.
It's been a long time. Years. Long enough that he thought Ethan was dead. Feared it. Pictured him tortured to death and incinerated in a prison crematorium.
"And no doubt you've missed me desperately, Ripper." Ethan's tone isn't as sarcastic as he probably meant it to be. Giles hears Ethan's ironies faltering under the pressure of a question, of a need.
The world's not the same as it was before that last battle, before the spell spread the burden of being Chosen among thousands of young women. Everyone's burden is a little lighter now, everyone's task a little more possible. Nothing's quite so desperate, and there's room for gray areas.
"I have missed you," Giles says, and lightly touches Ethan's cheek.
Ethan's eyes go wide and dark at the touch, and then close like the light's too bright.
In a moment Giles will reach out for him, kiss him. They'll see what they can make in this slightly better world. But for now he just looks at Ethan's face. It's been so long since the last time.
Ineffable Plans (three linked Good Omens crossovers)
I. Things In Common
They have so much in common. Books, for one; they love manuscript anthologies, English incunabulas, the sinuous clarity of early italic type, volumes with odd marginalia and printers' errors.
They like farmhouse cheeses, dry Amontillado, little seckel pears. Giles brings a hamper when he visits, and they picnic in the back of the shop.
They get along beautifully.
Giles has thought of kissing Aziraphale. Has wondered if his mouth tastes of heaven.
They don't kiss; they talk. And if they talk too often about the others, the men they ought to hate, well, that's another thing they have in common.
II. Things to Talk About
Once a month they meet in a pub and swap stories. Crowley's into computers now: viruses, pop-up ads, server crashes, spam for penile enhancement and Nigerian millions. Ethan's more old-fashioned; he drops cursed twenty-pound notes, summons minor demons in train station lavatories, inflicts amnesia on random passers-by.
They're a lot alike. Once a woman asked if they were brothers. Crowley gave Ethan a long, wet, toothy kiss before he answered "Yes."
After the pub, they get a room and fuck. Then, sprawled and sweaty, they talk about the others, the men they don't miss at all. It's their favorite topic.
III. Four at the Ritz
Over the lobster bisque, Crowley says "Funny how some people fancy themselves all good or all evil."
Over the herb-crusted lamb, Aziraphale says, "This world's really not a place for absolutes."
Over the mesclun salad, Crowley says, "Bad enough when heaven and hell get stroppy."
Over the tarte tatin, Aziraphale says, "A certain ambiguity's all right. Lets one get on with things."
After the walk to St. James' Park, Crowley and Aziraphale remember an urgent appointment elsewhere.
Giles says, "I think we've been had."
Ethan pulls a bread roll from his pocket. "Shut up and help me feed the ducks."
Pyre (for the Open On Sunday challenge: "books")
Ethan wants to see them burn. There'll be a crackle and then a roar as the dry old paper catches. Yellow flames like tame suns in the bedsit's darkness, illuminating every stain on the wallpaper and on the sheets. The leather bindings will smoke and stink; greasy soot will blacken the walls.
Maybe he'll let it all burn. Books and bed and all, and himself in the midst. All Rupert's leavings. Dead words, dead love, ready for cremation.
No. Even for love, Ethan won't burn a spellbook.
He settles on a pile of Rupert's old clothes and begins to read.
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