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indriSUMMARY: Giles and Ethan, the electric Kool-Aid funky Satan groove year, in the early seventies. Rated M. Spoilers to Band Candy. Acknowledgements and disclaimers.
71.
On Tuesday Ethan waited until the rest of the household had finished their morning routines and then he went to wake Rupert. He paused at the side of the bed, looking down at Rupert's tousled head until his lover smiled sleepily up at him. Then he helped him to the bathroom, where he'd already run a bath.
He went downstairs to fetch a coffee from the kitchen which he brought up for Rupert. Ethan sat on the toilet lid, watching Rupert while pretending to read a paperback novel. Rupert would shampoo his hair, dunking under the water to rinse it off, his knees poking into the air. Then he'd get out, towel himself off, and shave at the sink. Meanwhile, Ethan would have to steel himself from having sex there and then, if only because past experience had shown that they then wouldn't leave the bathroom until one of their housemates started banging on the door, desperate for the loo.
Once Rupert was clean and dressed, they went down to the local cafe to extravagantly order the full breakfast: bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, toast, even black pudding on occasion. Ethan had discovered he quite liked coffee when it wasn't made with Diedre's preferred brand of instant, so he ordered one of those. While they ate, they checked how much money they'd acquired over the past week. Ethan had another ten pounds from Mr Grey, and Rupert had a wad of singles and fives. Not enough for a visit to Terry's yet, but they'd only bought the Badescu last week, and it looked like they'd have enough for another book soon. They had a little spending money.
So Ethan then endured a half-hour in the local record shop, where the owner bemoaned to Ethan about the string of recent break-ins the shop had suffered, while Rupert sifted through the LPs looking for something he might have missed in his most recent theft.
"I'll tell you," the shop owner told Ethan, "he's got a taste for long guitar solos," as Rupert came up to the counter with his Hendrix and Clapton.
The weather was good, so they decided to go the park. Ethan told him about what he'd learnt from the Badescu, and Rupert lay back in the warm August grass and told him how that fitted in with what he knew from his Watcher lessons. He had a fantastic memory; Ethan would fuck it if he could. Rupert had a first-class mind all round, really. He told Ethan all sorts of things that Evelyn wouldn't or couldn't.
They had dinner at the pub with Diedre and Randall, with Adrienne turning up late again. Stan and Julie were there for a while too, before Julie had to catch her train home. She was a sweet girl but she didn't seem to have worked out yet that Ethan and Rupert were sleeping with each other; Ethan still found that faintly amusing. After four or five rounds, they headed home, Adrienne and Diedre singing as they went. Up in the drawing room they stopped to look at Randall's most recent painting. He was painting directly onto the walls now, up for forty-eight hours or more in the wake of each Eyghon spell. It was quite different from his previous style, much more abstract, tactile and visceral, with criss-crossing lines that you wanted to reach in between and floral shapes that looked rough to the touch. He was using all sorts of tools to press the paint on, shaving-brushes, old shoes, even his own body. But the smell of the paint drove Ethan out. He wouldn't work in the drawing room these days if he could help it.
So he took Rupert back upstairs to his room. They laid out the working for the first spell, a small and temporary transmogrification of stone into glass and back. Ethan had managed this sort of thing before, but the method was new to him, far more elegant and potentially much more powerful. Rupert leant over the set-up, pointing out the underlying principles, and asking questions about the specifics he didn't yet understand. He looked up at Ethan with that trusting, enquiring gaze he had and then they'd cast the spell. As always, Rupert would look a little startled at the surge of power Ethan was able to draw in, and Ethan would feel the familiar sensations of connection and control. But now there was also a sense of acceleration, of increasing mastery and cognisance.
It was joyous.
They had sex on Rupert's mattress afterwards and then Ethan laid out another spell. And then it was rinse and repeat until three or four or five o'clock in the morning, when they at last fell asleep, Ethan's arm stretched out over the chalk-strewn floor.
72.
He was fooling himself, Ripper realised, as he stood in the corner of the hotel restaurant, playing "I'll Be Seeing You." There were perhaps twenty diners, mostly businessmen out for their Friday "meeting", plus a few ladies-who-lunch who had come out for lunch. He watched them eating their steaks and drinking their martinis, talking loudly, slapping each others' backs, and laughing drunkenly. Not a single one even glanced in his direction. He might as well be a tape machine.
And this, surely, was what his life was going to be like. He wasn't going to be a rock star or even much of a session musician. He was going to spend his life playing anodyne background music for uninterested patrons, and teaching ill-disciplined schoolboys to play "Aqualung." It would be enough of a living for himself, probably, but how was he going to raise a family on that?
There was something Randall had said to him once that now preyed on his mind: Randall was waiting to hear him cut loose. But when he tried to do that, to reach his inner self and convey that in his music, nothing seemed to be there. There was a void. He couldn't do it. He could fall back upon a mild melancholy and his small amount of technical proficiency. He had nothing else to give.
He had been sure once that he'd find that spark within himself if he only looked; now he was sure it wasn't there.
He packed up his guitar to a very small scattering of applause and headed off to the bus.
The squat was the same as always. The kitchen floor was sticky and filthy. Dishes were piled up in the sink and he could see six spiders on one wall alone. There was the hall to the front door, blocked off by boxes of rubbish and broken furniture that no-one wanted to sort through. Up the stairs past those really disturbing paintings, was the unpleasantly-smelling bathroom, the second flight of stairs, and then his own room. He had a mattress, some records and a single chair. This was his life now.
He had had every opportunity life could afford. Caring and prosperous parents, a very fine education, worthwhile friends. He had good health, better than average looks, a modicum of athleticism, and an able mind. And yet somehow he was here, in this squat, with these freakish housemates, with career prospects that were slim to none and no sign of any sort of sensible relationship at all.
He lay face down on the bed. He wanted to just lie there for the whole afternoon, but it smelt too strongly of chalk and candlewax and sex with Ethan, so he bundled all the sheets together with his washing and took them down to the laundrette. As he filled the machine, he saw the clothes he had stolen from a complete stranger on Saturday night. That's the sort of man he was now, a drunken, fornicating, thieving yob.
He thought of all the people who had supported and encouraged him in his life. There were his parents, of course, who had always expected of him the very the best he could do, and no more. There were the teachers who had given him a little extra time, who had lent him extra books or spoken kindly to him. There was his fencing master. Doctor Chalmers, with his off-hand compliments and his detailed comments on Rupert's work. His fellow young Watchers had almost always said that the was the best of them and that he would go far. How had he deceived them, and himself, for so long? He had turned out to be a different kind of person altogether.
He didn't want anything for dinner and he didn't want to see anyone. Diedre knocked on the door, but he didn't answer. When she opened it, she said, "Are you pretending not to be in?" and then left him alone.
He tried practising his guitar but he was useless at it, all thumbs or possibly toes. He played "I'll Be Seeing You" over and over until Ethan thumped on the door and asked him to play anything else. He looked at the records he'd stolen a fortnight ago and thought he should take them back to Arthur's shop and confess. He'd be arrested, handcuffed, and sent to prison. He'd get out and then never be able to get another job again.
Suddenly his room felt too small. He ran out into the corridor. He smelt pot then and realised that Randall must be having a joint. He went into Randall's room.
Here the walls were covered in layer after layer of dark paint. Howling wolves were half-covered by arabesques of vines which were in turn partly covered by writhing abstractions of lines, circles and squares. Randall sat on a beanbag, his eyes closed, his hands hovering near his demonic record player, which was turned down so low that Rupert couldn't recognise the band. Randall's extravagant wardrobe was piled in a corner; here and there a puffed sleeve or the angle of a hat gave an unsettling impression of life.
Randall opened his eyes and gestured that Rupert should sit on a second beanbag. He lit a joint with a minor fire spell and passed it to Rupert.
Randall closed his eyes again, but after a while, he spoke. He talked about his paintings, how much they meant to him, how he felt the Eyghon spell was improving his work. He talked about the war in Vietnam, that it wasn't really over, and how it intersected with and blurred the lines of duty, beauty and love. He talked about Diedre, his love for her and his knowledge that he'd placed her in a bad position and yet didn't want to ever let her go. He talked about his childhood, his teenage years in San Francisco, and the weird month when he'd first shared a flat with Ethan and they hadn't really known what to make of each other. Rupert knew that Randall was trying to tell him profound things about Randall's life and being, but all the details just slipped out of Rupert's head.
It was almost midnight when he went back to his room. He lay on his bed for a while but couldn't get to sleep. The light from the streetlamps lit the room too brightly. After an hour he got up and went to Ethan's door, but it sounded like he was working. Ethan was never happy to have stoned people visit when he was casting his spells.
So Rupert went downstairs for a glass of water and maybe a gin. While in the kitchen he saw that Adrienne's light was still on, and he went to her room. She was sitting on her mattress, brushing her hair, wearing a short night dress that had rucked up and showed, well, everything.
"Ripper," she said, "I'm too tired tonight, but maybe in the morning?"
"I just want someone to lie next to," he said.
So she nodded and he got under the covers as she leant over to switch off the light. Then he lay next to her for hours, without once falling asleep.
71.
On Tuesday Ethan waited until the rest of the household had finished their morning routines and then he went to wake Rupert. He paused at the side of the bed, looking down at Rupert's tousled head until his lover smiled sleepily up at him. Then he helped him to the bathroom, where he'd already run a bath.
He went downstairs to fetch a coffee from the kitchen which he brought up for Rupert. Ethan sat on the toilet lid, watching Rupert while pretending to read a paperback novel. Rupert would shampoo his hair, dunking under the water to rinse it off, his knees poking into the air. Then he'd get out, towel himself off, and shave at the sink. Meanwhile, Ethan would have to steel himself from having sex there and then, if only because past experience had shown that they then wouldn't leave the bathroom until one of their housemates started banging on the door, desperate for the loo.
Once Rupert was clean and dressed, they went down to the local cafe to extravagantly order the full breakfast: bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, toast, even black pudding on occasion. Ethan had discovered he quite liked coffee when it wasn't made with Diedre's preferred brand of instant, so he ordered one of those. While they ate, they checked how much money they'd acquired over the past week. Ethan had another ten pounds from Mr Grey, and Rupert had a wad of singles and fives. Not enough for a visit to Terry's yet, but they'd only bought the Badescu last week, and it looked like they'd have enough for another book soon. They had a little spending money.
So Ethan then endured a half-hour in the local record shop, where the owner bemoaned to Ethan about the string of recent break-ins the shop had suffered, while Rupert sifted through the LPs looking for something he might have missed in his most recent theft.
"I'll tell you," the shop owner told Ethan, "he's got a taste for long guitar solos," as Rupert came up to the counter with his Hendrix and Clapton.
The weather was good, so they decided to go the park. Ethan told him about what he'd learnt from the Badescu, and Rupert lay back in the warm August grass and told him how that fitted in with what he knew from his Watcher lessons. He had a fantastic memory; Ethan would fuck it if he could. Rupert had a first-class mind all round, really. He told Ethan all sorts of things that Evelyn wouldn't or couldn't.
They had dinner at the pub with Diedre and Randall, with Adrienne turning up late again. Stan and Julie were there for a while too, before Julie had to catch her train home. She was a sweet girl but she didn't seem to have worked out yet that Ethan and Rupert were sleeping with each other; Ethan still found that faintly amusing. After four or five rounds, they headed home, Adrienne and Diedre singing as they went. Up in the drawing room they stopped to look at Randall's most recent painting. He was painting directly onto the walls now, up for forty-eight hours or more in the wake of each Eyghon spell. It was quite different from his previous style, much more abstract, tactile and visceral, with criss-crossing lines that you wanted to reach in between and floral shapes that looked rough to the touch. He was using all sorts of tools to press the paint on, shaving-brushes, old shoes, even his own body. But the smell of the paint drove Ethan out. He wouldn't work in the drawing room these days if he could help it.
So he took Rupert back upstairs to his room. They laid out the working for the first spell, a small and temporary transmogrification of stone into glass and back. Ethan had managed this sort of thing before, but the method was new to him, far more elegant and potentially much more powerful. Rupert leant over the set-up, pointing out the underlying principles, and asking questions about the specifics he didn't yet understand. He looked up at Ethan with that trusting, enquiring gaze he had and then they'd cast the spell. As always, Rupert would look a little startled at the surge of power Ethan was able to draw in, and Ethan would feel the familiar sensations of connection and control. But now there was also a sense of acceleration, of increasing mastery and cognisance.
It was joyous.
They had sex on Rupert's mattress afterwards and then Ethan laid out another spell. And then it was rinse and repeat until three or four or five o'clock in the morning, when they at last fell asleep, Ethan's arm stretched out over the chalk-strewn floor.
72.
He was fooling himself, Ripper realised, as he stood in the corner of the hotel restaurant, playing "I'll Be Seeing You." There were perhaps twenty diners, mostly businessmen out for their Friday "meeting", plus a few ladies-who-lunch who had come out for lunch. He watched them eating their steaks and drinking their martinis, talking loudly, slapping each others' backs, and laughing drunkenly. Not a single one even glanced in his direction. He might as well be a tape machine.
And this, surely, was what his life was going to be like. He wasn't going to be a rock star or even much of a session musician. He was going to spend his life playing anodyne background music for uninterested patrons, and teaching ill-disciplined schoolboys to play "Aqualung." It would be enough of a living for himself, probably, but how was he going to raise a family on that?
There was something Randall had said to him once that now preyed on his mind: Randall was waiting to hear him cut loose. But when he tried to do that, to reach his inner self and convey that in his music, nothing seemed to be there. There was a void. He couldn't do it. He could fall back upon a mild melancholy and his small amount of technical proficiency. He had nothing else to give.
He had been sure once that he'd find that spark within himself if he only looked; now he was sure it wasn't there.
He packed up his guitar to a very small scattering of applause and headed off to the bus.
The squat was the same as always. The kitchen floor was sticky and filthy. Dishes were piled up in the sink and he could see six spiders on one wall alone. There was the hall to the front door, blocked off by boxes of rubbish and broken furniture that no-one wanted to sort through. Up the stairs past those really disturbing paintings, was the unpleasantly-smelling bathroom, the second flight of stairs, and then his own room. He had a mattress, some records and a single chair. This was his life now.
He had had every opportunity life could afford. Caring and prosperous parents, a very fine education, worthwhile friends. He had good health, better than average looks, a modicum of athleticism, and an able mind. And yet somehow he was here, in this squat, with these freakish housemates, with career prospects that were slim to none and no sign of any sort of sensible relationship at all.
He lay face down on the bed. He wanted to just lie there for the whole afternoon, but it smelt too strongly of chalk and candlewax and sex with Ethan, so he bundled all the sheets together with his washing and took them down to the laundrette. As he filled the machine, he saw the clothes he had stolen from a complete stranger on Saturday night. That's the sort of man he was now, a drunken, fornicating, thieving yob.
He thought of all the people who had supported and encouraged him in his life. There were his parents, of course, who had always expected of him the very the best he could do, and no more. There were the teachers who had given him a little extra time, who had lent him extra books or spoken kindly to him. There was his fencing master. Doctor Chalmers, with his off-hand compliments and his detailed comments on Rupert's work. His fellow young Watchers had almost always said that the was the best of them and that he would go far. How had he deceived them, and himself, for so long? He had turned out to be a different kind of person altogether.
He didn't want anything for dinner and he didn't want to see anyone. Diedre knocked on the door, but he didn't answer. When she opened it, she said, "Are you pretending not to be in?" and then left him alone.
He tried practising his guitar but he was useless at it, all thumbs or possibly toes. He played "I'll Be Seeing You" over and over until Ethan thumped on the door and asked him to play anything else. He looked at the records he'd stolen a fortnight ago and thought he should take them back to Arthur's shop and confess. He'd be arrested, handcuffed, and sent to prison. He'd get out and then never be able to get another job again.
Suddenly his room felt too small. He ran out into the corridor. He smelt pot then and realised that Randall must be having a joint. He went into Randall's room.
Here the walls were covered in layer after layer of dark paint. Howling wolves were half-covered by arabesques of vines which were in turn partly covered by writhing abstractions of lines, circles and squares. Randall sat on a beanbag, his eyes closed, his hands hovering near his demonic record player, which was turned down so low that Rupert couldn't recognise the band. Randall's extravagant wardrobe was piled in a corner; here and there a puffed sleeve or the angle of a hat gave an unsettling impression of life.
Randall opened his eyes and gestured that Rupert should sit on a second beanbag. He lit a joint with a minor fire spell and passed it to Rupert.
Randall closed his eyes again, but after a while, he spoke. He talked about his paintings, how much they meant to him, how he felt the Eyghon spell was improving his work. He talked about the war in Vietnam, that it wasn't really over, and how it intersected with and blurred the lines of duty, beauty and love. He talked about Diedre, his love for her and his knowledge that he'd placed her in a bad position and yet didn't want to ever let her go. He talked about his childhood, his teenage years in San Francisco, and the weird month when he'd first shared a flat with Ethan and they hadn't really known what to make of each other. Rupert knew that Randall was trying to tell him profound things about Randall's life and being, but all the details just slipped out of Rupert's head.
It was almost midnight when he went back to his room. He lay on his bed for a while but couldn't get to sleep. The light from the streetlamps lit the room too brightly. After an hour he got up and went to Ethan's door, but it sounded like he was working. Ethan was never happy to have stoned people visit when he was casting his spells.
So Rupert went downstairs for a glass of water and maybe a gin. While in the kitchen he saw that Adrienne's light was still on, and he went to her room. She was sitting on her mattress, brushing her hair, wearing a short night dress that had rucked up and showed, well, everything.
"Ripper," she said, "I'm too tired tonight, but maybe in the morning?"
"I just want someone to lie next to," he said.
So she nodded and he got under the covers as she leant over to switch off the light. Then he lay next to her for hours, without once falling asleep.
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Date: 2011-09-13 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 01:15 am (UTC)