Fic: That Teenage Feeling (BtVS/HP, Giles/Lupin)
I have been working on this fic since January. It's one of those things that just keeps sitting, unfinished or unedited, mostly because I've been a little afraid of it all along. But, you know, Giles/Remus middle-aged-man crossover porn, it couldn't sit on the hard drive forever; that would be cruel. So here goes.
No idea where to pimp this. Let me know if you have ideas.
Title: That Teenage Feeling
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Harry Potter (crossover)
Pairing: Rupert Giles/Remus Lupin
Spoilers/Continuity: Takes place on Midsummer Night, 2004. That's a year after "Chosen" and, by most fannish reckoning, about seven years after Half-Blood Prince.The story contains vague references to both but no overt or specific spoilers for either.
Rating: NC-17 for porn.
Summary: Two Englishmen meet in a strange city, share a drink, and cast several spells.
Word Count: about 4,200.
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter novels are the intellectual property of J. K. Rowling. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the intellectual property of 20th Century Fox, Kuzui, Sandollar, and Mutant Enemy. This original work of fan fiction is Copyright 2006 Mosca. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. Now my heart is green as weeds grown to outlive their season.
Notes: Thank you to callmesandy and ashfae for beta reading, and to distraction77 and sathinks for handholding. Title is from a Neko Case song.
It was nearly dusk, but Giles had just found the perfect tree. He had started in Grant Park, believing that in this city that tried so hard to feel European, the large park in the center would house tucked-away groves. Instead, he found an expanse that rivaled Los Angeles's dreary oases in its Americanness. He'd started walking north in search of lunch and had reached a small dog park without finding any. The dog park was, at least, symmetrical and lush, and he had wandered it, his purpose outweighing his hunger. Here, just west of center, stood a bright, hovering maple. Several dwarfish city dogs lolled under it, belly up, attuned to its magic. Giles tapped the bark and listened for its ring; he rubbed a waxy yellow leaf between finger and thumb. This tree would serve, he decided. He still needed a bottle of spirits for the ritual, but he'd brought his own graal over from England, and a witch in Cleveland had given him a supply of barberry and sweet woodruff before he'd left. And the tree was the most important ingredient.
He was about to set off in search of an off-license (or a liquor store, or whatever it was they were called in the Midwest) when a slight man in an unfortunate suit met his eyes and inquired, "I seem to have got myself lost. Do you know where I might get a decent cup of tea?" It took a moment for Giles to realize that the man had an upper-class English accent.
Giles smiled in solidarity. "I'm a stranger here myself, I'm afraid," he said.
The man began to stammer an apology for wasting Giles's time. In addition to the suit, he had unfortunate hair and an unfortunate mustache. His eyes, however, were utterly fortunate.
"I would like a cup of tea," Giles said, "and I suspect that if we walk through this city long enough, we might find one." The other man's ears seemed to light on the "we," and he brightened like a dog that had heard its own name. "I'm Rupert," Giles said, holding out his hand. "Rupert Giles."
The man blinked at him for a moment, then shook his hand with a ragged pumping motion, as if he were unaccustomed to handshakes. "Remus Lupin," he said.
Chicago, as it turned out, was a city devoid of tea. There were plenty of places to buy a cup of coffee or a Polish sausage sagging with condiments. Remus spotted a Starbucks and grew hopeful, and Giles had to explain that what he would find there would bear only the barest resemblance to tea. At that moment, Giles was certain that Remus was a wizard: the name and the mustache had made him suspicious, but the total ignorance of Starbucks removed all doubt. In particular, Remus was a sort of insulated and isolated wizard almost unique to Europe. Most likely, he worked for the Ministry of Magic and referred to non-wizards as Muggles. And his kind had worse names for those who, like Giles, chose to blend in with the rest of humanity, to practice magic in secret and in moderation, with words instead of with wands.
They happened upon a small supermarket whose name, Treasure Island, inspired skepticism. Giles hoped it might sell spirits. What welcomed them on the inside was an entire wall of tea, stacked nearly floor to ceiling. Granted, most of it was insipid herbal shit and instant chai. However, so readily that Giles suspected there was spellcraft involved, Remus located a box of whole-leaf Assam imported directly from India. Under everyday circumstances, it might have been too expensive, but theirs had become the sort of mission that invited absurd perfectionism. There were mesh tea strainers hanging from a hook at the end of the shelf, and Giles took one of those as well.
Giles headed for the wine aisle, with Remus following close behind. Giles imagined that Remus feared getting lost: even a modest American supermarket was unlike anything that his sort of wizard bothered with. They slowed down in the midst of endless racks of bottles; Giles found himself a bit out of his own element.
"Do you have a date tonight?" Remus said.
"A -- a -- no. No, why would you -- why would you think --"
"It's just that you don't seem like much of a wine drinker," Remus said.
Giles wondered how someone could make such a determination after knowing him for half an hour, but he'd come to know that he was awfully transparent in certain respects. "I'm -- I'm not," he said.
Remus sized him up. "More of a single-malt man, I should think."
He was so terribly correct that Giles couldn't formulate a response. Instead, he led a brief wandering excursion in search of the harder spirits. As with the tea, Treasure Island lived up to its name. Giles cradled a bottle of Laphroaig in his hands and said, "It would be an awful waste."
Silently, running his hand along the shelf, Remus went to the other end of the aisle. He scanned for a moment, then raised a six-pack of Old Style lager to chest level. "This ought to do you better, then."
Giles made a face. He didn't mean to be a snob, but he'd gathered enough about Remus to conclude a degree of like-mindedness.
"For the spell you're planning to do tonight," Remus continued, sotto voce. "Some sort of variation on a portkey, centered around that tree, isn't it?"
Giles stammered, turned scarlet trying to collect himself, and stammered some more.
"The spell works best when you use local spirits," Remus said. "Returning what the land has given, and all that."
"I-I-I knew you were a wizard, but how - how -"
"You were examining the leaves," Remus said, "and you didn't seem to be employed by the Parks Authority." He dropped the lager into Giles's trolley. "We don't blend in well," he said. "Not even your lot."
"I'll... put away the Laphroaig, then," Giles said.
"You will not," Remus said, and Giles could not disagree with him. He brought his selection of beverages to the cashier, who squinted at him suspiciously when she asked for his ID but recovered an air of genuineness when she wished him a nice evening.
"You know, it's really a two-man spell," Giles said, shifting his paper sack under his arm. "I -- I can do it on my own, but --"
"We ought to be able to stretch the tea and Laphroaig 'til midnight," Remus said.
There was something almost ritualistic about agreeing to share drinks with this awkward, anxious, oddly familiar man. Something Anglo-Saxon: the pre-Norman code of hospitality had managed to thrive in the streets of this flat, shadowy city. Or perhaps it was something they were drawing collaboratively from the forces around them. It was clear that they were both powerful men, and it was quite common for necessity to be sufficient for the unconscious casting of small magics.
They walked back to Giles's motel room in the harsh slant of the evening sunlight. Remus made a flat plane of his palm to deflect the brightness. "Last night, I learned that this city becomes suddenly and violently lovely for fifteen minutes at dusk," he said. "If we slow down, we might catch it." Sure enough, as they neared the motel, the sun sank a few degrees and the sky turned a rich, surreal shade of blue. The clouds looked like photographic negatives of themselves, and the buildings resembled ancient trees, their shadows the imperious stares of god-kings in steel coffins. A sudden and violent desire took hold of Giles. He wished urgently to touch Remus, to place his hands on Remus's face and chest, to embrace him intensely. He pushed the longing to the back of his mind; the effort made him shiver.
"There's a bit of a breeze stirring, isn't there?" Remus said.
"That's not the wind," Giles said.
"Not at all," Remus said. His hand brushed Giles's fingertips, and a swell of sinister warmth passed between them.
"I wonder -- I wonder if a drink won't dull it," Giles said.
"It might, at that," Remus said.
Once they were indoors, the sensation subsided. They stopped for ice on their way to Giles's room. Giles kept thinking he ought to say something, but he suspected that Remus shared his disdain for conversation whose sole purpose was the avoidance of silence.
They agreed to enjoy the first of their Scotch while they waited for their water to boil. Remus offered to charm the motel room's sad percolator to heat the water instantly, but Giles waved him away. "It's wasteful," he said. "And dangerous."
"As if magic were something that couldn't be replenished," Remus said. "Or controlled."
"It can't be," Giles said. "Not consistently."
"So you practice, and you learn, and you minimize the risk," Remus said.
"And you gradually forget the joy of accomplishing things by mechanical means, until you're trapped in the Victorian era whilst the rest of the Western world has discovered the internet and the mobile phone," Giles said.
Remus shrugged. "It's a difference of philosophy, I suppose." He dropped ice into two plastic tumblers and poured Scotch generously, but not extravagantly, into each. He chose a cup as if the choice held some significance, and he raised it, saying, "To fortuitous meetings." Giles raised the remaining cup, nodded, and drank. The liquor tasted of peat and sea salt, of long-ago wars fought with stone and bronze. As the alcohol reached his brain, it produced another surge of desire, this one harder to fight. His forties had brought on a gradual and rather welcome ebbing of urges, and this felt adolescent and anachronistic. He could almost feel a kiss on his lips, his tongue rough in Remus's mouth, Remus yielding to his hands.
"So you've -- you've lived in the States a while, then?" Remus said. Giles couldn't tell if he was undergoing the same struggle, or if it was just social anxiety. He locked his eyes into Remus's to avoid staring at any other part of him. They were pale, alert, scarred.
"I spent six years in California," Giles said. "I managed to go back to Bath for a while, but now I'm back in Cleveland, of all the miserable places."
"Official business?" Remus said.
"Watcher's Council," Giles said.
Remus nodded with recognition. "I heard about the -- the tragedy there," he said. "At your headquarters. A rather transparent attempt to draw your lot into our business, don't you think?"
"Is that what it was?" Giles said.
"Well, it failed," Remus said. "So I suppose it doesn't matter."
"We were so absorbed in our own battles that we didn't consider the possibility," Giles said.
"It's for the best," Remus said. "It would have been a massacre."
"It already was," Giles said grimly. There was an uncomfortable pause, and he inwardly renounced all of his prejudices against conversation designed to fill silences. If he stopped talking, he was bound to pounce like a deranged animal and ruin what might have been this man's only suit. "So you're -- you're here on holiday?"
He'd intended it as a joke, and Remus picked it up with a wry smile. "On holiday from the war," he said. "I -- I lost a lover, and -- she was the second I've lost since -- since things got bad again." Giles choked a little on the 'she,' but he worked not to reveal it. He had a few 'she's in his own past that might have proven misleading. Remus continued, "I behaved recklessly afterward, and we, the Order, we agreed it was best that I spend some time away. Chicago was known to be a safe place. I came by airplane, like a Muggle."
Giles was impressed that the wizarding world was aware of the city's special properties. It was a sort of anti-Hellmouth, a stretch of real estate that fell under certain protective energies. Most such places were remote and uninhabitable; Chicago probably had been, at one point, when glaciers had buried it. It had taken European settlement to turn it from odiferous marshland into the least evil city on earth. Good liked to hide in places where humans couldn't stay, but climate change and human ingenuity had outwitted it here in the Midwest. Ironically, Chicago was as grimy, poor, corrupt, and violent as any city that Giles had visited. Where demons feared to tread, humans had no trouble perpetrating cruelty upon one another.
"I'm sorry," Giles said. "For your loss."
Remus looked over his shoulder as if searching for an escape route. Giles downed the last of his Scotch. Remus said, "The water ought to be boiling, don't you think?"
They stood up at the same time, eager for the distraction. Remus's hand brushed Giles's forearm, and Giles felt dizzy and clouded for a moment. When his head cleared, his hand was clasped tight around Remus's wrist, and they were facing each other, breathing heavily. Love spell, Giles thought, or something very like one. He couldn't be sure that Remus hadn't perpetrated it, but he suspected some outside force. If Remus had intended this, he would have made a move by now.
Giles took off his glasses and set them on the scuffed wooden object that served the dual role of desk and nightstand. He couldn't see clearly anyway. He'd been fighting for so long that he could no longer tell when it was time to surrender. He had four hours until midnight and a willing partner; his resistance was foolish.
He sat down on the bed, and Remus leaned down to pull him into a kiss. It was a gentler kiss than the one Giles had fantasized, smooth like finely distilled spirits and harsh with ghosts. It didn't feel like a first kiss, and Giles suspected that it might not be, not really. Remus had sturdy, steady hands, now that he didn't seem to be so nervous, hands that seemed accustomed to clawing at the earth. One of those hands was cradling the back of Giles's head, tangling his hair, and the other was at Giles's lower back, tugging out his shirttails. They were making out like teenagers.
He had an erection like a teenager, urgent and pleasurable. He wished acutely to feel Remus's soft, slow mouth on it, and he wasn't sure how to communicate that. Remus wouldn't make the first move. It was going to be a long night. He moved Remus's hand from back to front. Remus said, "Oh, you want -- oh. All right, then." Remus swung him around and sat him down on the bed. There was some fumbling with his belt that ended in profanity and a hastily muttered spell that Giles couldn't bring himself to protest against.
Remus knelt and bowed his head into Giles's lap. His tongue was intense, methodical, well-practiced. He held Giles with one hand on the back of his neck: a unique gesture, one made without thinking. The teenage urgency eased paradoxically, and Giles luxuriated in lips and tongue, the almost comforting ache of his cock as he rose toward orgasm, the warm clear sensation after release.
Remus stood up, smiling privately. He was visibly erect and, back on his feet, just the right height that they could both stay more or less where they were. Giles unzipped the trousers of his awful suit, and they puddled at his ankles. Giles surprised himself at how easily he slipped into his old technique, hand around the base of Remus's cock, blade of the tongue working the head over and under. He'd practically earned a First in boys at Oxford, and that wasn't the sort of education one forgot, even thirty years on. Remus was stone silent, tugging at Giles's hair, until suddenly he said, "Wait. Stop."
"Is something wrong?" Giles said.
"I'm... I'm a werewolf," Remus sputtered.
It hadn't occurred to Giles, but it explained quite a bit. The distance, the otherworldliness of him. "So don't bite me," Giles said.
"Well," Remus said. "Don't... stop, then." He eased back into Giles's mouth, pressing his weight down into Giles's shoulders. He came quietly, wearily, but the tension had subsided in him. "The water ought to be hot," he said, not as if to insinuate that nothing had happened between them. He was just thirsty, and so was Giles.
The water was still hot, not as the result of magic, but because the coffee maker had automatically switched to "warm" mode. The tea they produced was imperfect, but it was good enough, better than Giles had expected it to turn out. "You were remarkably unruffled by the, er --"
"Werewolf business?" Giles said, sipping.
"Yes."
"I, er, I had a student in California," Giles said. "A teenage boy who was bitten, and I -- I was responsible for... for his care for nearly two years. During which he had a girlfriend. And embarrassing questions."
"Ah," Remus said. "That's... quite a relief."
"What were you planning to do during the full moon?" Giles said.
"I reckoned I'd have two weeks to figure that out," Remus said.
"And have you?"
"There's an animal shelter on Chicago Avenue," he said dryly. "I was thinking of turning myself in."
Giles laughed softly. He considered offering to build him a cage in Cleveland, but he thought it might be too much to propose on a first date. Especially a first date that was likely to be a last date. "You have quite a bit to keep hidden, don't you?" he said.
"It's not so difficult, in cities," Remus said. "If you're in the countryside and you're a bit odd, people are inclined to inquire as to why. In the city, nobody can be arsed, so you pass quite well in an ill-fitting suit with a wand in your back pocket."
He was charming, Giles thought, when he wasn't frightened. And quite easy to talk to, enough so that they had no difficulty passing the time until midnight. When they'd finished their pot of tea, they switched back to the Laphroaig, and although they consumed it slowly, they both found themselves a bit wobbly on their feet at half past eleven. They made their way through the streetlit dark to the dog park. The park was closed for the evening, but Remus's repertoire of charms came in handy. And the tree, the perfect tree, was still there.
Remus was familiar with the generalities of the spell, and he offered a few amendments to the plan that Giles explained. "This way, it could be useful for, er, my kind, as well," he said. "If one of us had need for a quick escape to safer ground."
"It's the same war, isn't it?" Giles said. "We're all fighting the same war."
"Of course," Remus said. "It's the blind man and the elephant. We see the trunk, you see the tail, but it's all the same animal."
"I'd say it's the other way 'round," Giles said.
"Of course you would," Remus said.
At three minutes to midnight, Giles crushed the herbs in the graal and, choking back skepticism, filled it with cheap Midwestern beer. Its transformation of color and viscosity was reassuring. They rose, recited the spell, poured the brew, waited in puzzlement for a few moments, and found themselves encircled in a tree-high ring of ethereal blue fire, kissing passionately as the flames arced and rained around them.
The show (which, surely, its few spectators would misremember as early fireworks) lasted until Giles's mobile phone rang. The unexpected music startled Remus, and the flames sank sadly away. It was Willow, calling from Buenos Aires. "What spell did you cast?" she said.
"I cast the portal," Giles said. "It seems to have gone well."
"It -- it -- Well?"
"I -- It's not something I can test from here, but it seems to have worked," he said.
"It -- well, it worked," she said. "I could feel it from here."
"Well, good. Then."
"Good? Giles, did you -- did you change the spell or something? Because --"
"S-s-some of the Latin was poor," he said. He took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I had to make an adjustment to the maceration liquid to account for -- for terrain differences. And I -- I had -- I had help."
There was a long pause. "Is he cute?" she said.
"What? How did you --?"
"Was there band candy?" she said.
"There was not. How -- how -- how did you --?"
He couldn't finish his sentence, and she couldn't seem to start hers. He'd triggered something in her without intending to. She said, "There were times when -- when Tara was -- When we would do spells. And we'd, we'd --" She was choking back tears, and he wanted to tell her to stop. But he also needed to understand. He feared that he'd done something dangerous, something that would need to be reversed, and with all his books on the other side of the ocean, he had no way of being certain. She said, "We would expect the spells to do something, but they'd be -- they'd be ten times more powerful. Sometimes a hundred times. And always -- it was always the important stuff."
"So it's some sort of -- of sexual thing?"
"Complementary energies," she said. "That's how they explained it to me in the coven. It's -- it's rare. Like, a once-in-a-lifetime thing."
Giles tried to decide which was worse: losing that at the age of twenty-one, knowing you would never find such a connection again, or only finding it as you neared fifty, when your heart had become a maze of old scars and an unwinnable war nipped at your heels. But he suspected that it was not a matter of fairness. It was the sort of convergence that occurred beyond human control. It was a wonder that people found each other at all. "But the -- but the he," Giles said. "How did you know?"
"Opposite-sex couples tend to balance each other out," she said.
"Whereas two men or two women would reinforce -- That makes perfect sense," he said.
"So," she said. "Cute?"
"Men my age have in most cases passed the point of --" He looked over his shoulder at Remus, who had recovered from his astonishment at modern technology and set about tapping the tree and muttering Latin in a way that suggested he was testing the spell's success. He didn't look ridiculous, just focused. "He's lovely," Giles said.
"Close enough," Willow said.
"Ten times more powerful, did you say?" Giles whispered.
"Put it this way," Willow said. "If any of us ever gets trapped in a Hell dimension, we won't have much trouble getting home. Or, at least, getting to Chicago."
"Well, I suppose that's -- that's useful," Giles said. "Potentially."
"Potentially," Willow agreed.
"And this is likely to... to happen again?"
"It could just be a one-time thing," Willow said. "A convergence of necessity. But I don't -- I don't think this was all that necessary."
"Then -- then -- then what am I supposed to do? With -- with him?"
"I don't know," Willow said. "I mean, you're a grown-up, right? So I think -- I think you can kind of do whatever you want."
She was right, so he wished her a pleasant evening and hung up the phone. Remus had finished his poking and prodding and was leaning back against the tree. "We didn't cast the spell we meant to cast," he said.
"No," Giles said. "I'm led to believe we've cast something far more powerful."
"By whom?" Remus said. "If you don't mind my asking."
"The most powerful witch I know," Giles said. "Apparently she felt, er, this, in Argentina."
"Rupert, I don't wish you to take this the wrong way, but if we intend to make a go of this, we must learn to be more considerate of the neighbors."
It ought to have been funny, but Giles's mind got tangled up in the implications. "Do you -- do you really -- do you think we can?"
"Why couldn't we?" Remus said. He looked up at the bright sliver of moon. "In two weeks, that will be full," he said. "And you've some experience in the care of werewolves."
"You -- you want to come with me?"
"I'm sure you'll find something for me to do in... Cleveland, did you say?" Remus said. "It's the same war everywhere, after all." He tilted Giles's chin with his hand and kissed his lips softly. "Besides," he said, "nobody's made me feel like that in decades, and I'll be damned if I let that slip through my fingers again."
"I'd -- I'd be pleased to take you with me," Giles said. He bowed his head so their lips met again. Now that the sensation between them had a name and a sort of purpose, it had ceased to be terrifying. Only the excitement and the seductiveness remained. "I told her you were lovely," he said.
"I know," Remus said. "I was eavesdropping."
"I meant for you to hear," Giles said.
"It's all the same elephant," Remus said.
No idea where to pimp this. Let me know if you have ideas.
Title: That Teenage Feeling
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Harry Potter (crossover)
Pairing: Rupert Giles/Remus Lupin
Spoilers/Continuity: Takes place on Midsummer Night, 2004. That's a year after "Chosen" and, by most fannish reckoning, about seven years after Half-Blood Prince.The story contains vague references to both but no overt or specific spoilers for either.
Rating: NC-17 for porn.
Summary: Two Englishmen meet in a strange city, share a drink, and cast several spells.
Word Count: about 4,200.
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter novels are the intellectual property of J. K. Rowling. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the intellectual property of 20th Century Fox, Kuzui, Sandollar, and Mutant Enemy. This original work of fan fiction is Copyright 2006 Mosca. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. Now my heart is green as weeds grown to outlive their season.
Notes: Thank you to callmesandy and ashfae for beta reading, and to distraction77 and sathinks for handholding. Title is from a Neko Case song.
It was nearly dusk, but Giles had just found the perfect tree. He had started in Grant Park, believing that in this city that tried so hard to feel European, the large park in the center would house tucked-away groves. Instead, he found an expanse that rivaled Los Angeles's dreary oases in its Americanness. He'd started walking north in search of lunch and had reached a small dog park without finding any. The dog park was, at least, symmetrical and lush, and he had wandered it, his purpose outweighing his hunger. Here, just west of center, stood a bright, hovering maple. Several dwarfish city dogs lolled under it, belly up, attuned to its magic. Giles tapped the bark and listened for its ring; he rubbed a waxy yellow leaf between finger and thumb. This tree would serve, he decided. He still needed a bottle of spirits for the ritual, but he'd brought his own graal over from England, and a witch in Cleveland had given him a supply of barberry and sweet woodruff before he'd left. And the tree was the most important ingredient.
He was about to set off in search of an off-license (or a liquor store, or whatever it was they were called in the Midwest) when a slight man in an unfortunate suit met his eyes and inquired, "I seem to have got myself lost. Do you know where I might get a decent cup of tea?" It took a moment for Giles to realize that the man had an upper-class English accent.
Giles smiled in solidarity. "I'm a stranger here myself, I'm afraid," he said.
The man began to stammer an apology for wasting Giles's time. In addition to the suit, he had unfortunate hair and an unfortunate mustache. His eyes, however, were utterly fortunate.
"I would like a cup of tea," Giles said, "and I suspect that if we walk through this city long enough, we might find one." The other man's ears seemed to light on the "we," and he brightened like a dog that had heard its own name. "I'm Rupert," Giles said, holding out his hand. "Rupert Giles."
The man blinked at him for a moment, then shook his hand with a ragged pumping motion, as if he were unaccustomed to handshakes. "Remus Lupin," he said.
Chicago, as it turned out, was a city devoid of tea. There were plenty of places to buy a cup of coffee or a Polish sausage sagging with condiments. Remus spotted a Starbucks and grew hopeful, and Giles had to explain that what he would find there would bear only the barest resemblance to tea. At that moment, Giles was certain that Remus was a wizard: the name and the mustache had made him suspicious, but the total ignorance of Starbucks removed all doubt. In particular, Remus was a sort of insulated and isolated wizard almost unique to Europe. Most likely, he worked for the Ministry of Magic and referred to non-wizards as Muggles. And his kind had worse names for those who, like Giles, chose to blend in with the rest of humanity, to practice magic in secret and in moderation, with words instead of with wands.
They happened upon a small supermarket whose name, Treasure Island, inspired skepticism. Giles hoped it might sell spirits. What welcomed them on the inside was an entire wall of tea, stacked nearly floor to ceiling. Granted, most of it was insipid herbal shit and instant chai. However, so readily that Giles suspected there was spellcraft involved, Remus located a box of whole-leaf Assam imported directly from India. Under everyday circumstances, it might have been too expensive, but theirs had become the sort of mission that invited absurd perfectionism. There were mesh tea strainers hanging from a hook at the end of the shelf, and Giles took one of those as well.
Giles headed for the wine aisle, with Remus following close behind. Giles imagined that Remus feared getting lost: even a modest American supermarket was unlike anything that his sort of wizard bothered with. They slowed down in the midst of endless racks of bottles; Giles found himself a bit out of his own element.
"Do you have a date tonight?" Remus said.
"A -- a -- no. No, why would you -- why would you think --"
"It's just that you don't seem like much of a wine drinker," Remus said.
Giles wondered how someone could make such a determination after knowing him for half an hour, but he'd come to know that he was awfully transparent in certain respects. "I'm -- I'm not," he said.
Remus sized him up. "More of a single-malt man, I should think."
He was so terribly correct that Giles couldn't formulate a response. Instead, he led a brief wandering excursion in search of the harder spirits. As with the tea, Treasure Island lived up to its name. Giles cradled a bottle of Laphroaig in his hands and said, "It would be an awful waste."
Silently, running his hand along the shelf, Remus went to the other end of the aisle. He scanned for a moment, then raised a six-pack of Old Style lager to chest level. "This ought to do you better, then."
Giles made a face. He didn't mean to be a snob, but he'd gathered enough about Remus to conclude a degree of like-mindedness.
"For the spell you're planning to do tonight," Remus continued, sotto voce. "Some sort of variation on a portkey, centered around that tree, isn't it?"
Giles stammered, turned scarlet trying to collect himself, and stammered some more.
"The spell works best when you use local spirits," Remus said. "Returning what the land has given, and all that."
"I-I-I knew you were a wizard, but how - how -"
"You were examining the leaves," Remus said, "and you didn't seem to be employed by the Parks Authority." He dropped the lager into Giles's trolley. "We don't blend in well," he said. "Not even your lot."
"I'll... put away the Laphroaig, then," Giles said.
"You will not," Remus said, and Giles could not disagree with him. He brought his selection of beverages to the cashier, who squinted at him suspiciously when she asked for his ID but recovered an air of genuineness when she wished him a nice evening.
"You know, it's really a two-man spell," Giles said, shifting his paper sack under his arm. "I -- I can do it on my own, but --"
"We ought to be able to stretch the tea and Laphroaig 'til midnight," Remus said.
There was something almost ritualistic about agreeing to share drinks with this awkward, anxious, oddly familiar man. Something Anglo-Saxon: the pre-Norman code of hospitality had managed to thrive in the streets of this flat, shadowy city. Or perhaps it was something they were drawing collaboratively from the forces around them. It was clear that they were both powerful men, and it was quite common for necessity to be sufficient for the unconscious casting of small magics.
They walked back to Giles's motel room in the harsh slant of the evening sunlight. Remus made a flat plane of his palm to deflect the brightness. "Last night, I learned that this city becomes suddenly and violently lovely for fifteen minutes at dusk," he said. "If we slow down, we might catch it." Sure enough, as they neared the motel, the sun sank a few degrees and the sky turned a rich, surreal shade of blue. The clouds looked like photographic negatives of themselves, and the buildings resembled ancient trees, their shadows the imperious stares of god-kings in steel coffins. A sudden and violent desire took hold of Giles. He wished urgently to touch Remus, to place his hands on Remus's face and chest, to embrace him intensely. He pushed the longing to the back of his mind; the effort made him shiver.
"There's a bit of a breeze stirring, isn't there?" Remus said.
"That's not the wind," Giles said.
"Not at all," Remus said. His hand brushed Giles's fingertips, and a swell of sinister warmth passed between them.
"I wonder -- I wonder if a drink won't dull it," Giles said.
"It might, at that," Remus said.
Once they were indoors, the sensation subsided. They stopped for ice on their way to Giles's room. Giles kept thinking he ought to say something, but he suspected that Remus shared his disdain for conversation whose sole purpose was the avoidance of silence.
They agreed to enjoy the first of their Scotch while they waited for their water to boil. Remus offered to charm the motel room's sad percolator to heat the water instantly, but Giles waved him away. "It's wasteful," he said. "And dangerous."
"As if magic were something that couldn't be replenished," Remus said. "Or controlled."
"It can't be," Giles said. "Not consistently."
"So you practice, and you learn, and you minimize the risk," Remus said.
"And you gradually forget the joy of accomplishing things by mechanical means, until you're trapped in the Victorian era whilst the rest of the Western world has discovered the internet and the mobile phone," Giles said.
Remus shrugged. "It's a difference of philosophy, I suppose." He dropped ice into two plastic tumblers and poured Scotch generously, but not extravagantly, into each. He chose a cup as if the choice held some significance, and he raised it, saying, "To fortuitous meetings." Giles raised the remaining cup, nodded, and drank. The liquor tasted of peat and sea salt, of long-ago wars fought with stone and bronze. As the alcohol reached his brain, it produced another surge of desire, this one harder to fight. His forties had brought on a gradual and rather welcome ebbing of urges, and this felt adolescent and anachronistic. He could almost feel a kiss on his lips, his tongue rough in Remus's mouth, Remus yielding to his hands.
"So you've -- you've lived in the States a while, then?" Remus said. Giles couldn't tell if he was undergoing the same struggle, or if it was just social anxiety. He locked his eyes into Remus's to avoid staring at any other part of him. They were pale, alert, scarred.
"I spent six years in California," Giles said. "I managed to go back to Bath for a while, but now I'm back in Cleveland, of all the miserable places."
"Official business?" Remus said.
"Watcher's Council," Giles said.
Remus nodded with recognition. "I heard about the -- the tragedy there," he said. "At your headquarters. A rather transparent attempt to draw your lot into our business, don't you think?"
"Is that what it was?" Giles said.
"Well, it failed," Remus said. "So I suppose it doesn't matter."
"We were so absorbed in our own battles that we didn't consider the possibility," Giles said.
"It's for the best," Remus said. "It would have been a massacre."
"It already was," Giles said grimly. There was an uncomfortable pause, and he inwardly renounced all of his prejudices against conversation designed to fill silences. If he stopped talking, he was bound to pounce like a deranged animal and ruin what might have been this man's only suit. "So you're -- you're here on holiday?"
He'd intended it as a joke, and Remus picked it up with a wry smile. "On holiday from the war," he said. "I -- I lost a lover, and -- she was the second I've lost since -- since things got bad again." Giles choked a little on the 'she,' but he worked not to reveal it. He had a few 'she's in his own past that might have proven misleading. Remus continued, "I behaved recklessly afterward, and we, the Order, we agreed it was best that I spend some time away. Chicago was known to be a safe place. I came by airplane, like a Muggle."
Giles was impressed that the wizarding world was aware of the city's special properties. It was a sort of anti-Hellmouth, a stretch of real estate that fell under certain protective energies. Most such places were remote and uninhabitable; Chicago probably had been, at one point, when glaciers had buried it. It had taken European settlement to turn it from odiferous marshland into the least evil city on earth. Good liked to hide in places where humans couldn't stay, but climate change and human ingenuity had outwitted it here in the Midwest. Ironically, Chicago was as grimy, poor, corrupt, and violent as any city that Giles had visited. Where demons feared to tread, humans had no trouble perpetrating cruelty upon one another.
"I'm sorry," Giles said. "For your loss."
Remus looked over his shoulder as if searching for an escape route. Giles downed the last of his Scotch. Remus said, "The water ought to be boiling, don't you think?"
They stood up at the same time, eager for the distraction. Remus's hand brushed Giles's forearm, and Giles felt dizzy and clouded for a moment. When his head cleared, his hand was clasped tight around Remus's wrist, and they were facing each other, breathing heavily. Love spell, Giles thought, or something very like one. He couldn't be sure that Remus hadn't perpetrated it, but he suspected some outside force. If Remus had intended this, he would have made a move by now.
Giles took off his glasses and set them on the scuffed wooden object that served the dual role of desk and nightstand. He couldn't see clearly anyway. He'd been fighting for so long that he could no longer tell when it was time to surrender. He had four hours until midnight and a willing partner; his resistance was foolish.
He sat down on the bed, and Remus leaned down to pull him into a kiss. It was a gentler kiss than the one Giles had fantasized, smooth like finely distilled spirits and harsh with ghosts. It didn't feel like a first kiss, and Giles suspected that it might not be, not really. Remus had sturdy, steady hands, now that he didn't seem to be so nervous, hands that seemed accustomed to clawing at the earth. One of those hands was cradling the back of Giles's head, tangling his hair, and the other was at Giles's lower back, tugging out his shirttails. They were making out like teenagers.
He had an erection like a teenager, urgent and pleasurable. He wished acutely to feel Remus's soft, slow mouth on it, and he wasn't sure how to communicate that. Remus wouldn't make the first move. It was going to be a long night. He moved Remus's hand from back to front. Remus said, "Oh, you want -- oh. All right, then." Remus swung him around and sat him down on the bed. There was some fumbling with his belt that ended in profanity and a hastily muttered spell that Giles couldn't bring himself to protest against.
Remus knelt and bowed his head into Giles's lap. His tongue was intense, methodical, well-practiced. He held Giles with one hand on the back of his neck: a unique gesture, one made without thinking. The teenage urgency eased paradoxically, and Giles luxuriated in lips and tongue, the almost comforting ache of his cock as he rose toward orgasm, the warm clear sensation after release.
Remus stood up, smiling privately. He was visibly erect and, back on his feet, just the right height that they could both stay more or less where they were. Giles unzipped the trousers of his awful suit, and they puddled at his ankles. Giles surprised himself at how easily he slipped into his old technique, hand around the base of Remus's cock, blade of the tongue working the head over and under. He'd practically earned a First in boys at Oxford, and that wasn't the sort of education one forgot, even thirty years on. Remus was stone silent, tugging at Giles's hair, until suddenly he said, "Wait. Stop."
"Is something wrong?" Giles said.
"I'm... I'm a werewolf," Remus sputtered.
It hadn't occurred to Giles, but it explained quite a bit. The distance, the otherworldliness of him. "So don't bite me," Giles said.
"Well," Remus said. "Don't... stop, then." He eased back into Giles's mouth, pressing his weight down into Giles's shoulders. He came quietly, wearily, but the tension had subsided in him. "The water ought to be hot," he said, not as if to insinuate that nothing had happened between them. He was just thirsty, and so was Giles.
The water was still hot, not as the result of magic, but because the coffee maker had automatically switched to "warm" mode. The tea they produced was imperfect, but it was good enough, better than Giles had expected it to turn out. "You were remarkably unruffled by the, er --"
"Werewolf business?" Giles said, sipping.
"Yes."
"I, er, I had a student in California," Giles said. "A teenage boy who was bitten, and I -- I was responsible for... for his care for nearly two years. During which he had a girlfriend. And embarrassing questions."
"Ah," Remus said. "That's... quite a relief."
"What were you planning to do during the full moon?" Giles said.
"I reckoned I'd have two weeks to figure that out," Remus said.
"And have you?"
"There's an animal shelter on Chicago Avenue," he said dryly. "I was thinking of turning myself in."
Giles laughed softly. He considered offering to build him a cage in Cleveland, but he thought it might be too much to propose on a first date. Especially a first date that was likely to be a last date. "You have quite a bit to keep hidden, don't you?" he said.
"It's not so difficult, in cities," Remus said. "If you're in the countryside and you're a bit odd, people are inclined to inquire as to why. In the city, nobody can be arsed, so you pass quite well in an ill-fitting suit with a wand in your back pocket."
He was charming, Giles thought, when he wasn't frightened. And quite easy to talk to, enough so that they had no difficulty passing the time until midnight. When they'd finished their pot of tea, they switched back to the Laphroaig, and although they consumed it slowly, they both found themselves a bit wobbly on their feet at half past eleven. They made their way through the streetlit dark to the dog park. The park was closed for the evening, but Remus's repertoire of charms came in handy. And the tree, the perfect tree, was still there.
Remus was familiar with the generalities of the spell, and he offered a few amendments to the plan that Giles explained. "This way, it could be useful for, er, my kind, as well," he said. "If one of us had need for a quick escape to safer ground."
"It's the same war, isn't it?" Giles said. "We're all fighting the same war."
"Of course," Remus said. "It's the blind man and the elephant. We see the trunk, you see the tail, but it's all the same animal."
"I'd say it's the other way 'round," Giles said.
"Of course you would," Remus said.
At three minutes to midnight, Giles crushed the herbs in the graal and, choking back skepticism, filled it with cheap Midwestern beer. Its transformation of color and viscosity was reassuring. They rose, recited the spell, poured the brew, waited in puzzlement for a few moments, and found themselves encircled in a tree-high ring of ethereal blue fire, kissing passionately as the flames arced and rained around them.
The show (which, surely, its few spectators would misremember as early fireworks) lasted until Giles's mobile phone rang. The unexpected music startled Remus, and the flames sank sadly away. It was Willow, calling from Buenos Aires. "What spell did you cast?" she said.
"I cast the portal," Giles said. "It seems to have gone well."
"It -- it -- Well?"
"I -- It's not something I can test from here, but it seems to have worked," he said.
"It -- well, it worked," she said. "I could feel it from here."
"Well, good. Then."
"Good? Giles, did you -- did you change the spell or something? Because --"
"S-s-some of the Latin was poor," he said. He took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I had to make an adjustment to the maceration liquid to account for -- for terrain differences. And I -- I had -- I had help."
There was a long pause. "Is he cute?" she said.
"What? How did you --?"
"Was there band candy?" she said.
"There was not. How -- how -- how did you --?"
He couldn't finish his sentence, and she couldn't seem to start hers. He'd triggered something in her without intending to. She said, "There were times when -- when Tara was -- When we would do spells. And we'd, we'd --" She was choking back tears, and he wanted to tell her to stop. But he also needed to understand. He feared that he'd done something dangerous, something that would need to be reversed, and with all his books on the other side of the ocean, he had no way of being certain. She said, "We would expect the spells to do something, but they'd be -- they'd be ten times more powerful. Sometimes a hundred times. And always -- it was always the important stuff."
"So it's some sort of -- of sexual thing?"
"Complementary energies," she said. "That's how they explained it to me in the coven. It's -- it's rare. Like, a once-in-a-lifetime thing."
Giles tried to decide which was worse: losing that at the age of twenty-one, knowing you would never find such a connection again, or only finding it as you neared fifty, when your heart had become a maze of old scars and an unwinnable war nipped at your heels. But he suspected that it was not a matter of fairness. It was the sort of convergence that occurred beyond human control. It was a wonder that people found each other at all. "But the -- but the he," Giles said. "How did you know?"
"Opposite-sex couples tend to balance each other out," she said.
"Whereas two men or two women would reinforce -- That makes perfect sense," he said.
"So," she said. "Cute?"
"Men my age have in most cases passed the point of --" He looked over his shoulder at Remus, who had recovered from his astonishment at modern technology and set about tapping the tree and muttering Latin in a way that suggested he was testing the spell's success. He didn't look ridiculous, just focused. "He's lovely," Giles said.
"Close enough," Willow said.
"Ten times more powerful, did you say?" Giles whispered.
"Put it this way," Willow said. "If any of us ever gets trapped in a Hell dimension, we won't have much trouble getting home. Or, at least, getting to Chicago."
"Well, I suppose that's -- that's useful," Giles said. "Potentially."
"Potentially," Willow agreed.
"And this is likely to... to happen again?"
"It could just be a one-time thing," Willow said. "A convergence of necessity. But I don't -- I don't think this was all that necessary."
"Then -- then -- then what am I supposed to do? With -- with him?"
"I don't know," Willow said. "I mean, you're a grown-up, right? So I think -- I think you can kind of do whatever you want."
She was right, so he wished her a pleasant evening and hung up the phone. Remus had finished his poking and prodding and was leaning back against the tree. "We didn't cast the spell we meant to cast," he said.
"No," Giles said. "I'm led to believe we've cast something far more powerful."
"By whom?" Remus said. "If you don't mind my asking."
"The most powerful witch I know," Giles said. "Apparently she felt, er, this, in Argentina."
"Rupert, I don't wish you to take this the wrong way, but if we intend to make a go of this, we must learn to be more considerate of the neighbors."
It ought to have been funny, but Giles's mind got tangled up in the implications. "Do you -- do you really -- do you think we can?"
"Why couldn't we?" Remus said. He looked up at the bright sliver of moon. "In two weeks, that will be full," he said. "And you've some experience in the care of werewolves."
"You -- you want to come with me?"
"I'm sure you'll find something for me to do in... Cleveland, did you say?" Remus said. "It's the same war everywhere, after all." He tilted Giles's chin with his hand and kissed his lips softly. "Besides," he said, "nobody's made me feel like that in decades, and I'll be damned if I let that slip through my fingers again."
"I'd -- I'd be pleased to take you with me," Giles said. He bowed his head so their lips met again. Now that the sensation between them had a name and a sort of purpose, it had ceased to be terrifying. Only the excitement and the seductiveness remained. "I told her you were lovely," he said.
"I know," Remus said. "I was eavesdropping."
"I meant for you to hear," Giles said.
"It's all the same elephant," Remus said.