Giles walked into the living room and was surprised to see Spike watching something out of the front window instead of something on the television. In fact, the television was, for once, switched off.

"What are you looking at?" Giles asked. "Is there a meteor shower? A horde of rampaging demons? Does one of our neighbors have a new car that you particularly covet?"

"Bloke across the street is putting up Christmas lights," Spike said. "Better than a comedy act, he is. He's hit his thumb twice with the hammer and now is leaning so far over he looks ready to fall off the ladder. If I'm lucky he'll pull down the bloody lights with him."

"How kind of you to revel in another's misfortune." Giles came up behind him and peered over his shoulder into the twilight.

"Bugger his misfortune. I saw him test out the lights. They blink."

"They what?"

"Blink. Flash on and off. Seem to do some sort of rhythmic pulsing, too, and not in a good way. Bloody barbarians. What ever happened to putting candles on Christmas trees?"

"After enough houses burned down, I expect that people learned their lesson. And I'm well aware of the definition of the word blink."

"Fine, then, but they could at least keep to white lights. This git even had ripples of color going down the strands like it's sodding Las Vegas."

"Lights that ripple? Dear lord. I shudder to think what Ethan would have done with those back in the day," Giles said, staring with some horror at their neighbor's decorations.

Spike looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

"Sounds like there's a story there."

"A very short one. He used to smoke certain herbs and go into a meditative trance while surrounded by blinking Christmas lights. He said that the patterns of color opened his mind to the universe."

"And did you ever do that?" Spike asked, beginning to grin.

"I might have tried it once," Giles said with a slight grin of his own. "Purely for research purposes, I assure you."

"Liked to experiment, did you?"

"Lucky for you, I still do," Giles said, sliding his arms around Spike's waist.

"You'll get no complaints from me there." Spike tilted his head back and melted against Giles' body as they kissed.

"I'm done working for the evening," Giles murmured. "If you're interested in spending some time together, perhaps we could do some experimenting of our own. Unless you'd rather watch the neighbors set up their tacky decorations."

"I'll close the curtains. You go on up."

Smiling, Spike kissed Giles again before turning back to the window.

Giles had reached the bottom of the stairs when he heard Spike swear.

"What's wrong now?" he asked.

"Guy down the street has got a bloody light-up Santa."

~end~