The London Sonnets

Spoilers: Anything through Buffy S4 is fair game.
Rating: NC-17 SLASH
Disclaimer: Property of Joss and ME. Just playing.
Summary: Ethan pays Giles a visit to ask a favor and draws Ripper out.
A/N: Follows Till My Bad Angel Fire My Good One Out. Slash and violence, you have been warned. Thank you to Savvy whose “guhs” keep me motivated. The title is taken from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 121. For previous installments of the Menageaverse, please visit our website at www.responsibleadults.sadbhyl.riverworld.net.


Ethan was mad, there was no other explanation for it. If he had any sense at all, he wouldn’t currently be standing outside the Valentine Suite of the Kildare Gardens Bed & Breakfast. A smart man would stay away and not tempt his luck.

He had never listened to reason.

He rapped quickly on the door before he could change his mind. The door swung open.

“Agnes, I assure you everything’s—Ethan!” Rupert, still in his robe and pajama pants, didn’t look angry so much as shocked to see him standing there.

“I do hope Agnes is that charming matron downstairs and not your bit of stuff on the side,” Ethan eyed his friend critically.

“Joyce isn’t here,” Rupert said tersely.

“I know,” Ethan brushed past him into the room. He took in the surroundings. Even nicer than he’d thought. Must be costing Joyce a small fortune.

“What do you want, Ethan?” Rupert shut the door and faced him.

“I thought you and I should have a chat while Joyce was out . . . scouting for new objets d’art I assume?” Rupert nodded. “Smart woman, mixing business with pleasure.”

Rupert lay on the bed and looked at him expectantly. “What do we need to chat about?”

Ethan was surprised at Rupert’s lack of, well, kicking his ass. “You’re not going to throw me out?”

“I happen to be at a loss for a few hours. I figure listening to you ramble is more entertaining than being here alone. And we probably should discuss some things while we have the chance.”

Ethan sat in the armchair opposite the bed. Four-poster. Hm, maybe if things . . .

“Trying to kill me with kindness, eh, Ripper?”

Rupert glared at him.

“I need to ask you a favor,” he said quickly.

He had Rupert’s attention with that. “A favor?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes I . . . I made a promise to Joyce a few weeks ago. And I need you to help me keep it.” Ethan stopped, trying to find the right words. If he hadn’t run into Rupert and Joyce last night, he might never have asked. But after seeing Joyce’s face . . . If he were a smart man, Ethan would be running from this situation, leave Joyce, and Rupert, behind him for good.

“What is it, Ethan?” God, was that actual concern he heard in Rupert’s voice?

“You know how I get when the power builds up in me and what I usually do to relieve it.”

“Too well.”

This was a bad idea. “Remember how you used to help me when I got like that?”

A shadow fell across Rupert’s face. Again he said, “Too well.”

“I need to know if you’d be willing to do that again.”

At first, Rupert just stared at him. “Why are you . . . what . . . Ethan, are you out of your mind?”

“I just might be.”

Rupert was off the bed and pacing. “Ethan, it’s insane. I—No.”

“Why not, Ripper?”

“Why not? Why not? You need to ask me that after—I can’t do that again. I can’t go back to that place in myself.”

Knowing he was playing with fire, “Didn’t seem to have to much trouble that morning at Joyce’s.”

Ripper leapt at him in an instant. Leaning over he effectively trapped Ethan in the chair. “I can’t,” he said through clenched teeth.

“No, my friend, you can and you do, regardless of whether you want to or not,” Ethan said, calmly baiting the other man. “You’ve done a remarkable job, but repression only works so long. It doesn’t make things disappear.”

“If you didn’t bloody keep showing up, it wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Wouldn’t be an issue? Ripper, you’re a ticking time bomb. If I didn’t show up every now and then, well, I doubt it would be pretty.”

Blue-grey eyes glittered dangerously, but Rupert was still in control. Barely.

Ethan pressed the issue further, “You need to let go as much as I do, Ripper. As much as you fight it, the darkness is there and it’s not going away. It will find a way out, whether you want it to or not. Would you rather take it out on me, or risk the chance that you’ll take it out on Joyce.”

Ripper pulled Ethan up out of the chair by his shirt. “I would never hurt Joyce like that.”

“Would never? Mate, you nearly did that morning. She got in your way. Do you want that to happen again, when you can’t stop yourself?”

“I’d get away from her.”

“She wouldn’t let you. You think I wanted to do that to her? Joyce wouldn’t fucking let me leave. She had to see. She wanted to see,” Ethan felt his ire grow in the face of Rupert’s stubbornness. The man was on the edge as Ethan’s straining shirt could attest.

“Joyce didn’t un—”

“Joyce isn’t a fool, Ripper. She knows neither of us are saints, even though you pretend to be.”

Ripper backhanded him with enough force to knock Ethan down were he not still held up by his shirt. He tasted the coppery tang of his own blood. “Do you want me to kill you, Ethan? Is that it?” Ripper snarled.

“You haven’t been able to do it yet.”

“I almost did.”

Ethan flashed briefly on the month he’d spent in the hospital more than twenty years earlier. Not one of the most pleasant experiences he’d had. Shaking it off, he said, “Well, you didn’t succeed.”

“Not then.”

“Not now either,” Ethan broke free. “You think you can still take me down, Ripper? I doubt it.”

He dodged Ripper’s right hook only to be caught by a left to his gut. Despite the lack of air, he still managed a harsh laugh. “That all you got, Ripper?”

Ripper threw another punch; Ethan ducked and struck back. His friend looked stunned.

“Forgot I could hit back, didn’t you?”

Ripper backhanded Ethan again, knocking him against the fireplace. Strong hands were on his shoulders, jolting him painfully back against the brickwork. Then Ripper’s mouth was on his, swallowing the cry of pain. Ethan didn’t remain passive and attacked in kind. Fisting his hands in the robe, he pulled Ripper tight against himself. He bit down on Ripper’s thrusting tongue, hard enough to draw blood but not hard enough to damage.

Ripper broke away and spat. “That, my friend, was a mistake,” his voice was deceptively light.

Ethan used the momentary pause to shove Ripper off of him. The man stumbled back until he caught himself on one of the mahogany posters.

“You’ve gone soft, Ripper, mate. Was a time I couldn’t do that,” Ethan strode forward. “Maybe I misjudged you.”

Ripper lunged and missed, or so Ethan thought before he felt an arm wrap tightly along upper torso, pulling him back against the body behind him.

“Your overconfidence, Ethan, has always been your undoing,” Ripper hissed in his ear. An instant later his ear was on fire as Ripper’s teeth snapped down.

Ethan willed his body to remain still, hands clenched in fists by his sides. He would not give Ripper the satisfaction of letting him know how much he was affected.

The grip around his chest tightened as Ripper’s free hand snuck down Ethan’s front and stopped at his growing erection.

“Violence always did make you hard,” Ripper chuckled.

Ethan ground backward, Ripper’s thin sleep pants doing little to conceal the man’s own arousal. “Seems like you’re the pot calling the kettle,” his voice came out rough and mocking.

Ripper’s arm fell from around him only to send Ethan sprawling against the foot rail of the bed. He was instantly pinned between Ripper and the bed, the other man pressed against every inch of him—chest to back, cock to ass, thigh to thigh.

As Ripper began to rock his hips, Ethan stifled a groan.

“Such a little whore, aren’t you?” Ripper whispered, hands undoing Ethan’s trousers. “Never care whether you’re fucking or being fucked, just so long as you’re involved. And the more violent, the better, right?” Hand wrapped tightly around his cock, sweat and precum mixing as Ripper’s fist worked up and down. “And you always pushed me a little farther each time, walking away with a few more cuts and bruises, wearing them proudly for days or weeks. You loved being marked.” Ripper bit down on the muscle between the juncture of Ethan’s neck and right shoulder.

Ethan shuddered at the contact and Ripper stopped his ministrations, hand abandoning Ethan’s straining cock. He felt his pants tugged farther down and soon Ripper’s nails dug sharply into his sensitive cheeks. When they let up, fingers were prodding at his rear passage.

“I’m going to fuck you until you’re raw. Raw and aching. And then I’m going to fuck you again.” Fingers spread him without mercy. “Fuck you until all you know is my cock buried in you, stretching and filling you.”

“Yes,” Ethan breathed.

“Yes, what, Ethan?” Ripper’s fingers twisted inside.

“Yes, Ripper, fuck me.”

“Fuck you how?” Fingers were removed, the head of Ripper’s cock pressed at the entrance, waiting.

“Yes, Ripper, fuck me raw. Fuck me until I am raw and aching and all I know is you,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

Ripper pushed in then, all the way, nails now digging into Ethan’s hips as he began to move. The strokes were quick, hard, and direct, designed for Ripper’s pleasure and not Ethan’s.

When Ethan tried to give himself some release, Ripper stopped him with a sharp bark, “No!” It was a command that brooked no argument, one that Ethan had learned to obey years ago or blue balls would be the least of his worries. So he gripped the foot of the bed tighter as Ripper pounded into him and waited, fingers clinging whitely onto the wood baseboard, until Ripper chose to grant him release.


True to his word, Ripper fucked Ethan raw. After coming the first time, Ripper paused long enough to tear off what remained of Ethan’s clothes, and using the torn shirt, bound Ethan to one of the posters with his hands above his head.

“Don’t want you to take advantage of things if the opportunity arises,” Ripper smiled coldly, tying the fabric tightly.

Teeth, tongue, lips biting, licking, sucking along Ethan’s neck and shoulders, digging deep, drawing blood. Ethan could feel warm rivulets trickling across his skin.

“I used to do this to you for hours on end, marking every last inch. But I could never get more than a moan from you,” Ripper breathed across his skin, biting down hard enough to elicit just such a moan. “No matter what I did, you never screamed. Liked to hold onto the pain. Revel in it.”

And he was right. The sharp sensations pushing sensory overload only heightened Ethan’s pleasure. Exclamations had to be drawn from him or escaped unbidden when he was overcome.

Ripper pushed into him then, but his pace was less frenzied this time. Ripper’s hands strayed everywhere but where Ethan needed them, tweaking, teasing, scraping across his chest and down his thighs but denying his cock each time he passed by it. Ethan gripped his bonds in frustration.

“Joyce is a screamer, though. She likes to let you know how you make her feel,” Ripper spoke, voice oily slick as his hands strayed closer. “She doesn’t care who hears, lets the passion take her over completely.”

Joyce, breathless and glistening, arching back as she—Ethan shook the thought from his head, not something that would help him at the moment. Now, if Ripper would just move his hand over a little more. Ethan shifted his hips slightly, earning a light brush before Ripper moved the hand away and locked him in place.

“Looks like it wasn’t your hands I needed to worry about,” Ripper said picking up the pace. “Would you scream for me, Ethan, if I got you off now?”

Ethan groaned. Capable of articulating little else at the moment.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Ripper nibbled his ear. “Such a shame really. All that tightness has to be getting unbearable. So close and you can’t do a single thing about it.”

Ripper came soon after and left Ethan standing there, still aching with denied release. By the time Ripper untied him and moved things to the bed, Ethan could no longer feel his arms. He barely noticed the pins and needles of returning circulation as Ripper took him a third and final time. Ethan’s need was so great and his arms useless, he could do little more than let Ripper fuck him. As he began to shudder with climax, Ripper brought Ethan off at last. Relief washed through Ethan’s body and he collapsed bonelessly on the bed.

As they lay there after, Ethan could tell the exact instant Rupert returned to himself. The air almost grew heavy with the weight of the man’s self-inflicted guilt.

Rupert started to get off the bed, but Ethan held fast with an iron grip on the other man’s wrist.

“Rupert! Look at me!” he commanded. Rupert did so with resignation. Ethan could almost see the walls going up again. “This stops now.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said tiredly.

“I’m not letting you lock this down. You can’t keep running, Rupert.”

“Ethan, I’m sorry,” Rupert sighed heavily.

“Don’t apologize,” Ethan practically shouted. “Because all that does is adds another stone to your neck, so you can keep wandering around playing the martyr, atoning for your sins.”

“That’s not how it is.”

“No? So you really enjoyed wearing tweed all those years?”

Rupert was silent.

“Did you do anything that I didn’t want you to? That I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to? Did I bait you?”

“I can’t accept it like you can. I can’t like that part of myself.”

“You don’t have to like it, but you have to accept it. The darkness is a part of you, Rupert. You can’t escape that, no matter how many books or how much tweed you hide behind.”

“Are you trying to save me, Ethan?” Rupert snorted.

“No, I’m trying to make sure you don’t lose Joyce again. Do you know that she actually thought you didn’t want her anymore after what I did?” That seemed to strike a cord with Rupert. “Joyce is a good woman, and neither of us deserve her. I don’t like to see the lady hurt, and if that means I have make you act like a man, I suppose I’ll have to deal with that.”

Rupert stared off, frowning in thought. “I never thought I’d see the day,” he said grudgingly, “but thank you, Ethan.”

“Don’t let it get around. I’ve got an image to maintain.” Then serious, “So, will you help me, the next time?”

“I suppose I do owe you,” Rupert agreed.

“No more guilt,” Ethan said pointedly.

“I’ll try,” Rupert said. He looked at his wrist where Ethan stilled held him. “May I go now?”

Ethan released him. “My work is done.”

He lay back as Rupert went off to the bathroom. Definitely not how he had expected things to go. It seemed like he was the one getting soft. But it was the least he could do for Joyce.