After 8:30
written by Malnpudl
Rating: FRT
Spoilers: Set maybe a year or so post-‘Chosen’. Ignores certain events in AtS canon. Didn’t happen. Didn’t.
Summary: Giles likes fountain pens. Wesley likes Giles. He’s not the only one.
Thanks: My thanks, as always, to Ruth for the beta. You’re a gem.
Dedication: This is in answer to Gileswench’s Birthday Challenge to write a fic inspired by a product name at http://www.lush.com/.
Happy birthday, Gileswench! Hope you like your prezzie!
Feedback Author: Malnpudl
Author's LJ: Passing For Normal
Rupert likes fountain pens. They’re impractical, he admits, but he says
he likes the sense of history they provide him, the tangible connection
to the past.
He showed them to me one day, his small collection – though he calls it
an accumulation, says he’s not a collector since his pens are for using,
not just for admiring in a glass case while one hopes they’ll appreciate
in value. His aren’t pretty, most of them, and they certainly aren’t
perfect. They’ve all been used, some of them used hard, scarred, used by
his own hands and by others before him. Some have other people’s names
engraved into them. He says he likes that, likes to imagine the person
who owned and used this pen before him and cared enough about it to have
it personalized, or, better still, received it as a gift from someone
who loved them enough to have it engraved.
He’s at his desk now as I sit on the sofa with my book (well, his book,
really), ostensibly reading and researching but surreptitiously watching
him instead. Buffy’s in the recliner across the room with a book in her
lap, an unwieldy tome lavishly illustrated with horrific woodcut
engravings. She’s supposed to be researching, too, but I can see her
from the corner of my eye and I catch her stealing looks at Rupert as
often as I see her actually reading.
He picks up the pen cup on his desk and idly pokes at his pens with a
fingertip, choosing.
He fingers his favorite, a slim green one with a rippled metallic sheen
and interchangeable nibs. It was an inexpensive pen in its day, he’d
told me, not quite smiling as he turned it slowly in his hands, and
still to be had for a song half a century later, still reliable, still
tough as nails.
That same almost smile is there now, hovering around his eyes, not quite
reaching his lips. I can’t look away.
He selects another pen, originally his father’s, one of the few he owns
that’s truly beautiful. He’d shown me this one, too, one day not so long
ago. He’d held it up to the lamp for me, showing me how the light
kindled the translucent swirling reds and golds into solid flame while
he talked about the beauty and warmth of celluloid and the seven years
it took to cure the rods before this pen could be manufactured. I’d
looked at the pen and seen the glowing colors and the art of its design,
and I’d seen his long fingers holding it and the texture of the skin on
the back of his hand and the subtle play of muscle in his forearm as he
slowly spun the pen in front of the light.
His shirt stretches taut over his back now as he reaches across his desk
for the inkwell. He’s leaner than he used to be, hardened from long
hours spent training the young Slayers in combat techniques. He shifts
in his desk chair, and the worn denim of his jeans molds to the contours
of his thigh. I wonder if the fabric is as soft as it looks, and the
muscle beneath it as hard.
There’s quiet competence in Rupert’s movements as he opens the inkwell
and fills the pen, lifting the lever and lowering it once, then again
before pulling the pen out and wiping the nib with a soft ink-stained
cloth. Competence is so very attractive, far more than the flex of a
wrist or smoky green eyes or soft hair curling behind an ear, though
those are attractive enough.
I steal another look at Buffy. Her hooded eyes, too, are on him, but
she’s looking at his bare foot, just visible just beneath the desk. I
can tell even through her blouse and bra that her nipples are hard. She
glances over at me and catches me watching her watching him, and drops
her gaze back down to her book.
Rupert’s attention is focused on his work. He scans through the book on
his desk, occasionally picking up his pen and scratching a few notes,
and for a while I manage to invest almost as much attention in my own
research as I do in watching him. I’m making some progress, if only by
elimination, when I see him reach for the small plate of bite-sized
pastries at the corner of his desk. I glance sidelong at Buffy; her lips
are slightly parted and her gaze is locked on him as he slips a pastry
into his mouth. I look back at Rupert in time to see him slowly chew and
swallow before absently licking powdered sugar from his thumb, then his
fingers, and I stir restlessly on the sofa.
He looks up at me. “How’s it going, Wesley? Find anything yet?”
I clear my throat. “Er, no, not yet, I’m afraid.” I duck my head and
make a short-lived effort to pay attention to my work.
“Buffy? Any luck?”
“Nope. Still among the luckless over here.”
“I’m afraid I’m not doing much better.” He closes the book in front of
him and trades it for another from the stack at his right. “Perhaps…”
His voice trails off as he begins to read once more.
The stained glass lamp paints warm, soft colors across his face; his
lips are slightly pursed in concentration. I abandon all pretense at
work and just watch him from under my lashes, hungry to know the taste
of his mouth, the texture of his skin.
Suddenly I’m aware that Buffy is looking at me, has been for some time,
and that the book in my lap has slipped to one side, revealing the
incipient swelling in my jeans. I turn my head and meet her eyes. She
holds my gaze for a long moment before the corner of her mouth turns up
just a bit; it’s not quite a smile. She glances at Rupert and then back
to me, and we share the first moment of complete accord that I think the
two of us have ever known.
The mantle clock strikes ten and Rupert caps his pen and stretches, his
back cracking once or twice.
“That’s enough for tonight, I think,” he says, standing up. “We can pick
this up again tomorrow.”
Buffy takes a moment to shuffle her book and lower the recliner’s
footrest before arising, giving me time to arrange my clothing to
conceal the erection that has not yet entirely subsided.
“After eight-thirty, then, as usual?” I ask as I move toward the door.
“After eight-thirty,” he says, and closes the front door behind me.
END