#and the mold falling down all over him in a stifling heap of black ash. symbolism

[stonemouthzag]

Jeff Buckley is soooo dangerous after 10pm

[via-whitmore]

Fic: you’re too intact (Giles/Ethan PWP)

Oneshot for the @buffyversegiftexchange and @ Aspasiathebloody

CONTENT WARNINGS: Consensual breathplay/choking, powerplay, nonconsensual voyeurism, magically infused sex

Read on AO3 

The truth of it was Ripper was never cut out for glam. By the time Bowie killed Ziggy, he was grateful the sequins and feathers were drifting to the stadium floor in spotlight and fading smoke. Ziggy was the beacon out of the dark of archives, tea rooms, and graveyards but he had no desire to start dressing like a peacock and learning to apply lip liner. He believed his mask  was more subtle. The working class hard knocks dropout was easier to live in until he could forget everything they’d wanted him to be. So what if his parents hadn’t run a grocery? When he said anarchy he saw the Council building going up like Guy Fawkes day. He had his tower to pull down, same as any of the born East Ender. The death he’d seen would wake these alley brawlers screaming in the night. He deserved London. He deserved punk.

Ethan, on the other hand, would not let glam die even if he had to keep it alive single handedly under his own skin. Ethan taught Ripper much of this--the deserving. Ethan had the ability, with magic or without, to be so a part of London that he could wear its shadows like a skin while simultaneously being a bonfire in the gray rain. He wore the safety pinned leather jacket and the pink boa and lipstick. This was not always good for his safety. And much of their gang’s lives were taken up with cracking skulls over Ethan’s appearance. But he taught Ripper about dancing on the line between wanting to disappear and demanding to be heard. It was Ethan who stole Ripper his second guitar and their record player. It was Ethan who suggested Ripper sing lead vocal while he took the role of mosh pit disciple.

Now here they were. There was no place to fuck in the one room squat they were calling a flat unless all six of them were doing it together. Nominally, nebulously, the lines broke down into Deidre and Tommy, Randall and Phillip. Now, Ripper supposed, he and Ethan. One or the other had decided they wanted to fuck alone together. Ripper couldn’t remember who’d set his eyes on whom amidst the tangle of limbs and made the decision. He would never be able to even after it all turned to ash. They might still get pulled in on public indecency but this was the first year sodomy itself wouldn’t get them arrested. At least on paper. 

“Someday we will all be free,” Ethan had said, tone flippant but eyes shining. 

It was the kind of thing one could only say without irony at eighteen, no matter how disaffected one was trying to look. Ethan always believed in a future and his ability to move into it. Ripper was trying only to think about the now.

And now had Ethan up against an alley wall, the boy’s legs wrapped expertly around his back. Ethan was biting into the leather that covered Ripper’s shoulder to stifle his moans. It was not the first time, but one of the first. The first time, Ripper never would have done what he did next.

“Stop my breath,” whispered Ethan.

Ripper didn’t know what he meant. He covered his inexperience by reaching down into Ethan’s jeans, where the two of them rubbed together, and pinching the bare cock with two fingernails. He hushed Ethan’s scream by shoving his thumb into the boy’s mouth. Ethan could smell himself on fingers that were callused not only from guitars and fistacuffs. He would never ask where they came from. He pulled at the hand and placed it over his nose and mouth as Ripper expertly got his own jeans down just enough, Ethan supporting all his own weight. Something flashed in Ripper’s eyes, the barest spark of a question. Ethan nodded. Ripper reached into his pocket, smeared his fingers with lube, and began to play expertly against Ethan’s hole.

“Oh God! Oh God!” 

Only Ethan knew what he was saying against Ripper’s palm. Sex was the only time he ever called down what was a fiction at best and an old bastard at worst. 

What could I call down and move through this man’s hands? Ethan thought distractedly. What could I make with them? What could we make?

Ripper was rod-hard against Ethan without so much as a kiss in return. Ethan rubbed against him like a cat, slid down, and turned against the wall; presenting his ass. He never wore underwear. He reached into the pocket of his lowered jeans and pulled out a black scarf, tied it around his eyes, and listened to the sound of unzipping. The deep grunt Ripper gave as he pulled his cock out and slicked it thrilled through Ethan’s body. Under the layer of body heat and the cool mist, Ethan could feel the low current of dormant magic rolling off the other man’s taut body and touching deep inside to meet his own. In his personal darkness, he felt Ripper reach out and brush a fingertip against the scarf and into his curls. Then he slid a palm under Ethan’s silk shirt and stroked up his spine. Ethan’s breath deserted him at the shockingly tender touch, his jaw falling. He wanted to buck away from it and dissolve simultaneously. There was someone gentle underneath all the fury roiling in this man. Ethan had no use for gentleness.

Liar, liar, he thought. That’s okay, beauty, we can make you anyone you want to be. All masks become real with enough time.

He was forgetting the drab surroundings, retreating into a plane of only sensation under the hands. Then Ripper pinned him with all his weight to the wall and slipped inside him. He exhaled a hot breath on the back of Ethan’s neck. When Ethan howled, the palm came back against his lips. He licked it playfully. Ripper gave him a moment to adjust, to just let them feel one another, before he drew out slightly and struck into him. 

“Faster,” Ethan begged after the third such movement.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” growled Ripper, but he picked up his pace.

Maybe he could sense how best to please Ethan. But it was a shaky assumption. He wasn’t used to this, Ethan could tell. No dirty little quickies in the hay with the stableboy at the country house. Maybe there had been a mean older boy in the dormitories. Or maybe there hadn’t been anyone at all. The thought added another layer of delight over the mounting pleasure and the low scald of magic.

“I could do anything to you,” Ripper hummed hotly against his ear. He sounded less commanding and more incredulous at the idea. Seeming to sense the slip in his guise, his voice assumed a harder edge. “Leave you here blind in a heap. Like a rat in the gutter.”

Ethan nudged the hand away from his mouth. Ripper obviously didn’t know enough to hold his turf.

“You’re in the gutter with me now,” he answered breathlessly.

Ripper didn’t know how to reply and so licked the back of Ethan’s neck. He crested Ethan further and further towards release but it wasn’t quite enough. He knew how to put the cherry on the cake.

Ethan knew how to bend a lover’s will with a spell. It did absolutely nothing for him. Devoting himself to chaos had been a way to rid himself of the controlling impulse inherent in magic. Molding the world to one’s desires was too...available. Ethan wanted to be Puck, not some Old Testament god.

He wanted the chance to give himself over to this mess of a man walking between selves. But sometimes, one had to grease the wheels just a little to see what the outcome would be.

He sent the message to Ripper’s hands where they pressed on the wall above his head, not to his mind exactly. The idea needed to be Ripper’s. Ethan was no beggar. The hands slid down and began to gently massage the sides of Ethan’s throat. He sighed encouragingly.

There was the barest instant of a halt while Ripper considered and even the fear Ethan felt added to the closeness of orgasm. 

“That’s what you want?”

“Hurt me.”

“I--”

The illusion of Ripper broke for just that breath. Ethan wasn’t worried. All things with time.

“I’ll teach you.”

It could easily have been a disaster. Ethan might have had to think through the brink of orgasm to loosen a less experienced partner’s hands and avoid danger. It was his own fault. He hated asking for what he wanted; all the discussion. But he certainly didn’t want brain damage. But Ripper knew and somewhat hated that he knew. Old combat training came back. He mentally worked backwards from the desire to subdue an opponent, placing cupped hands on either side of Ethan’s neck again. The flutter of his rapid pulse beneath his fingers excited Ripper and pulled him back into the moment. He squeezed gently, moving his forefinger to apply some moderate pressure just below the trachea. Ethan’s legs tightened spasmodically around Ripper’s body and he bucked as he came. Ripper released his hold quickly, clutching Ethan close as he shuddered and muffled his cry in Ripper’s neck.

“Got you,” Ripper gasped. “I’ve got you.”

It was a long moment before Ethan wrapped his arms around Ripper in return.

“You’re good,” he gulped.

“You’re a manipulative little shit. And if you ever control me again, I’ll break your fucking jaw.”

“Promise?” 

Ethan batted his eyelashes. Ripper pushed him away with a sneer. As Ethan stumbled backward, Ripper disguised catching him by the shoulder by steering him onto his knees.

“I gave you what you wanted.” His voice caught, then turned hard. “Your turn.”

Ethan grinned. As he obliged, neither of them knew someone out in the night rain had watched the moment with a hidden set of animal eyes. He admired the look of the two punk lovers. Watching them in the first fumblings of sticky submission almost made Spike wish he could still breathe. He did not know he stood several feet from a boy trained in every way to tear him apart. He did think perhaps it was time for a new look for such new and brazen times; something to lure such kids in their dark clubs. 

It’s not the place of this work to ask if the boy would have done so had he caught the vampire staring. He only tossed back his head with a silent cry against the brick and let the cold air expand his lungs before he did up his pants and offered a hand to the one on the ground. Then they walked through the mist past the one who had been watching. 

They raced each other up the stairs to their squat like children. They took off their damp clothes and didn’t bother to put on new ones. Ethan covered his surprised squeak when Ripper pulled him down to lay at his side on the mattress. If they fell asleep together, it wasn’t anyone’s business.