He grins up at Rupert, who's dressed at least fifteen years older than he seems to be -- his face is handsome, and there are wrinkles around his eyes, but he *seems* younger than his suit -- and pulls out a very worn California driver's license that's a month away from expiring.
"Daniel," he says, handing Rupert the license. "See? Apparently I live in Sunnydale. Says so there. But --" Daniel (he doesn't think he likes "Danny" or "Dan", which make him think of Math Club for some reason) empties his pants pockets on the surface of the table. "I've got a motel room key, key to a rental car, and --"
As he digs in his jacket pocket, the room fills with more chatter, Randy and Willow and Alex and Tara. Anya and Joan are arguing and Umad's standing off to the side, rolling her eyes dramatically. They're all upset, and Daniel's not sure why. This is weird, definitely, but it's kind of cool.
"Someone's got plans tonight," Randy says, swooping in and taking up the bottle of Astroglide personal lubricant Daniel just set on the table. "Economy size, no less!"
Through it all, Rupert's just looking at him, wearing a faint smile as his hands move in his pockets. He looks relaxed, almost happy, and Daniel smiles back.
"Think I'm on the lam," he tells Rupert. His throat hurts a bit and he ducks his head, coughing, as he adds with a grin, "Congrats on the marriage, by the way."
Daniel thinks this is what's called flirting. He likes it.
When Daniel smiles, it's suddenly clear what a handsome boy-young man-he is. Subtle good looks, not like Randy's flash dye job and swooping cheekbones, and more interesting for that subtlety. "Er, thanks," Rupert says, smiling back at him. Green eyes, or possibly blue; it's hard to tell in this light. He could tell if he were closer. "But I think that may all be a misunderstanding." Looking at Daniel, at his square shoulders under jacket and ugly green cardigan and uglier pink t-shirt, at his narrow hips and strong, agile fingers tipped with purple nail varnish, Rupert is increasingly sure that Anya's the wrong type entirely.
"Rupert!" she says loudly, unexpectedly, and her fingers wrap possessively around his arm. "Come and tell Joan that she doesn't get to be the boss."
Joan, standing by the counter with the young girl-Dawn, Rupert thinks she's called-puts her hands on her hips. Small as she is, she looks formidable. "All I said was that we should go to a hospital!"
"But here we are in a magic shop, and I just know that I have a lot of valuable knowledge. Looks at all these potions and things!" Letting Rupert go, Anya starts to scan the shelves. "Dried coelacanth brains, essence of wolfsbane, powdered pyromorphite, 10% solution of bat's blood . . . what doctor could provide all this?"
Although he hates to think he's the kind of person who'd take mercantile advantage of the ignorant, Rupert finds he can't quite believe in magic. "Anya, perhaps Joan has a point. At least, let's rule out medical problems first."
With evident reluctance, Anya puts a jar of something unpleasant-looking back on the shelf. "Fine. But you're still not the boss, Joan."
Everyone but Anya seems to agree that a doctor is a good idea, so soon and with a minimum of wrangling they're headed towards the door. "-red and shaped like a penis," Randy starts speculating, quite unjustifiably, about Rupert's car, to Anya's apparent amusement. Rupert's just about to tell him to button it when someone opens the door and there are monsters outside, and then everyone's screaming and cowering and shoving heavy furniture to try and block the entrance.
Keeping his eye on Rupert -- whose suit, he's realizing, is nicely-fitted and really pretty handsome -- Daniel crouches behind the redheaded girl with nice breasts and Alexander, the big jock big-brother guy, across from Joan and Dawn and the blonde woman with even nicer breasts, and they're all whispering urgently.
"Monsters are real!" Joan says, clutching at Dawn. "Did we know this?"
"Sure," Daniel says. Next to the bottle of Astroglide in his pocket is another, smaller bottle of holy water. And he doesn't *feel* Catholic, either. There was the dream, and the Buddha sitting serenely next to the cash register makes him feel...good. Warm, wrapped in a big sweater. "Why wouldn't they be?"
Joan just looks at him, then the rest of them, and Daniel shrugs. Sure, it's scary, but panicking doesn't seem to be the way to deal. It's only weird when Alexander and the redhead leave -- that makes him nervous, makes his nose twitch -- and when Rupert scoffs at the monsters and magic again.
Daniel figures it's no skin off his nose whether he's right or not, so he keeps mum. Willow and Alex come back, and then it all gets crazy again, breaking glass and monsters inside. One grabs for Joan and gets Dawn by the hair. Daniel's fists unclench, his fingernails prickling sharply, and he feels a *growl*, sour and gravelly, spill out his mouth. The vampire sneers and shoves her back at him.
Joan shoves the stake through the vampire she just kicked and it explodes into dust.
"Rad," Daniel says, and Rupert smiles tightly at him over Anya's head. Daniel scratches his bruised cheek and shrugs again.
"Hell are you talking --" Alex starts to say, then faints.
When he comes to, everyone's splitting up, Joan and Randy heading outside, the rest to the sewers, Rupert and Anya staying in the shop.
"Aren't you coming?" the pretty woman, Tara, asks and touches his hand.
"Think I'll stick around here," Daniel says. "You guys get help. Maybe, like, I know ancient languages." He glances at the Buddha and somehow -- knowledge and forgetting are weird, he feels like an anthropologist in his own mind -- he knows that that's Sanskrit engraving underneath. "Sanskrit."
Anya sorts through the bookshelves and Rupert leans heavily on the counter.
"Anything I can do?" Daniel asks him. Rupert's tie is askew and Daniel's hand wants to straighten it out.
It seems impossible that this boy could be an expert in ancient languages, but then everything for the last half hour has been impossible. "Well, there are a lot of books. Look for anything about memory spells. And-" Looking around, Rupert notices that the books towards the front of the shop have bright bindings and titles like "Five-Minute Spells," while those on the back shelves, the ones marked Not For Sale. Please Do Not Touch, are bigger, dustier, with names stamped in faded gold lettering on their leather spines. They look serious. They look, somehow, like Joan when she pushed a stake into a vampire's heart and made the creature explode. "Perhaps we ought to start back here." Daniel looks puzzled for a second, then imitates his sweep of the room, gets it, and smiles. "Thanks," Rupert says, reaching for a couple of big folio (folio? how does he know that word?) volumes on a high shelf. He's glad Daniel stayed, ancient languages or not.
Behind him there's the thud of a book being dropped on the table, and Anya says, "I've got it!"
"Wonderful. Good work, Anya." Looking at the book, though, Rupert isn't so sure. Habka yqing btollo, the title reads. Animal spells, in the Davniq demon language.
Demon language?
"Anya, are you quite sure?" he tries to ask as she lets the book open at random. Daniel, looking through the first of a large stack of books, glances up at him for a second.
"I'm using my intuition. I am a magic shop owner, after all." She closes her eyes, stabs a page with her finger, and intones something. Not in Davniq, apparently, as Rupert doesn't understand it. For a second the room's air seems to condense into a heavy syrup, then there's a pop and a rabbit appears on the table. Anya shrieks and buries her face in Rupert's shoulder. "Get it away from me!"
Patting her back, Rupert watches as Daniel scoops the rabbit up. "It's all right, Anya. Daniel has it. And it won't hurt you, it's only a-"
"Don't. Say. That. Word." She shudders, presses more tightly against him for a second, then, to his surprise, turns back towards the book. "I must have done the spell wrong."
Well, she's determined, he's got to grant her that. And at least she didn't conjure up anything worse than a rabbit. Given how the day's been going, that's something to be grateful for.
"Cantamen memoriae," Daniel whispers to himself and the bunny with brown fur and big black eyes, and it is heavy and soft, like a load of laundry, in his arms. He deposits the bunny, which he's already named "Devon" for some reason he doesn't understand, in a packing crate at the back of the shop and slides a book on top of it.
"Hey, I know Latin, I think --" he says as he comes back into the room. Seven more bunnies, and Anya's standing on top of the table, clutching her book to her chest. Rupert leans against the counter, his arm around the Buddha as he pinches the bridge of his nose. "Wow. Bunnies."
Anya shrieks and Daniel looks around, expecting a vampire behind him.
"Don't say that word," Rupert says wearily, slipping his glasses back on. Daniel's about to apologize when Rupert pushes off from the counter and *winks* at him.
At least Daniel thinks he did. Something happened, but it's over now, Rupert standing by the table and looking up at Anya, pleading with her to come down. Daniel scoops up two more rabbits, white ones this time, and sings a snatch of an old pop song under his breath to them while he hunts the third.
It's sneakier than the others and seems to anticipate each move he's about to make.
Rupert looks at him when Daniel slips past him, still singing, and he looks about to join in when the air crackles and snaps apart, the ceiling lifting and vanishing to reveal a purple, starry sky.
"Whoa," Daniel says, looking upward, forgetting the bunnies, edging closer to Rupert. "Pretty."
"Er, yes, I suppose," Rupert says, while somewhere in his brain gears grind, a few million switches click to new positions, and he finally realizes that he's never, in all those days and nights he can't remember, seen the sky that color. It's wrong, and the stars shouldn't be arranged in those clumps that mean, ominously, nothing. And the thunder that tolls out like an enormous bell shouldn't rumble so deeply in their bones and under their feet, or have that metallic edge.
On the table, Anya pushes back her wind-whipped hair and turns to a new page. "Get down from there this instant!" Rupert shouts, crossing the room (mercifully, it is still a room, they've still got walls and a floor) at a run and snatching the book out of her hands. A page rips, making him wince, and Anya crumples it and throws it at him.
"Give that back!" She starts to climb down, notices a couple of rabbits scurrying around with Daniel in pursuit, and retreats back to the center of the table.
"Anya, has it occurred to you that this is the wrong book?"
"How do you know? We haven't tried everything in it yet!" Overbalancing after lunging for the book, Anya catches herself on Rupert's shoulders and clings, somehow resentfully, then draws away with a frown. "Are you always this ungrateful? I don't know how I stand it."
Daniel, holding a rabbit in one arm and dragging a box out of a storage cupboard with the other, looks over with what Rupert is sure is amusement, although there's nothing that could actually be called an expression on his face. Gentle amusement, not mocking, and Rupert knows he can't be an ungrateful person, because he's grateful for this. "Anya, our relationship is hardly the most important concern right now. And in any case I'm not sure we have one." He reaches up to help her off the table. "Come down, the rabbits are-"
Frowning, Anya steps away from his hand. "Are you saying you don't want to marry me?"
"Well . . . yes." This is all absurd, mortifying, and purple sky is turning redder by the moment, but Anya sounds so hurt that Rupert can't help explaining. "Please don't take it personally. I . . . I don't think I'm all that interested in, in marriage. Or . . . women." He can feel Daniel watching him, but he can't look.
"You're gay? And you didn't tell me?" Everything in Anya's posture shows fury, and perhaps it's the bruise-colored shadows this unnatural light casts on her face, or the way the wind distorts her voice, but Rupert suddenly finds her a little terrifying. "Men! You're all liars and pigs. Somebody should - should just take vengeance on you all, that's what I say." She clambers down from the table, ignoring Rupert's attempt to help her, somehow not looking laughable even when she has to take off her shoes.
"Anya-"
"I'm going down into the tunnels. I want out of this horrible place, and I want my memory back, and I want to find out that I was never, ever thinking of marrying you." Clutching her high heels, not even flinching when she has to pass the last uncaught bunny, Anya disappears through the basement door.
Daniel realizes that during their argument he has pulled back behind the counter, a black bunny squirming in his arms. Like if he makes himself *small*, he'll be safe, something like that. He's been squinting at Rupert's back, trying to make him turn around, but until Anya leaves, he has no such luck.
Then Rupert *does* turn, leaning heavily on the table and rubbing the back of his neck, and he looks exhausted and sad and strangely alone. And Daniel doesn't know what to say.
He stows the black bunny in the second crate and scans the shelves for a book he *knows* he saw earlier.
There it is. Veneficus aeris, the lettering on the spine of the small leather volume reads. And again in tiny black gothic letters on the frontispiece, beneath a woodcut of an old man with wind-whipped white beard gesticulating at the heavens.
"This might help," Daniel says, and he's looking kind of at Rupert, kind of at the roiling stormclouds, lemony and steely, over Rupert's shoulder. "Weather spells and things. Probably won't make more bunnies, anyway."
Rupert takes the book the way other people -- Daniel doesn't know *how* he knows this, but he knows -- would accept jewelry. Carefully, almost tenderly.
A splotchy red-and-white bunny leaps over Daniel's foot and he sets off to chase it down. When the last of the bunnies, a big brown lop-ear he wants to call "Xander", is safely crated, Daniel turns back to Rupert.
The air in the room has quieted, gone a little cooler, and the ceiling shimmers in and out of sight. Rupert straightens his shoulders and speaks the incantation in a deeper, steadier voice. Daniel holds his breath and after two heartbeats, the ceiling snaps back into reality.
"Nice job," Daniel says, exhaling slowly. Rupert ducks his head, smiling, then meets his eyes. "And congratulations."
Rupert starts to speak, but then he closes his mouth and just looks puzzled.
"On coming out, I mean. Significant occasion." Rupert stares a little more, and then his smile starts to spread, matching Daniel's own. "Should, like, shake your hand. Kiss you?"
Something-time or air or just Rupert' gut-jerks and pauses like film caught in a spool. He can still hear Daniel's voice, soft as old flannel around the sibiliants of kiss, the sound as persistent in his ears as the rush of his blood. And he also doubts he ever heard it at all. The room's light falls cinematically bright, the tables and books look weightless as styrofoam props, and if he blinks this illusion will fade and he'll be back in his own life, which can't possibly be the sort of life where boys offer to kiss him.
Rupert takes a deep breath and looks back at Daniel's face. Such a pretty mouth he has, wide smile and a sweet-natured curve to his lower lip. "K-kiss me?" It's a question, full of high-pitched, stammering disbelief, because kissing Daniel is somewhat less likely even than vampires and spells that move magic shops into other dimensions.
It was a question, and he's not sure if Daniel ignores it or answer it by stepping closer. Rupert doesn't move, can't-control of his body has gone to join memory and common sense and the rest of reality-but he doesn't have to. Daniel lays a cool palm on his neck, pulls him down, and Daniel's lips are cool too at first, soft. Warmer as they open, and he tastes salt-sweet as melon, concentrated sun and musk, and Rupert's hands clench in Daniel's stiff hair, hold him still to be kissed, and he's glad this is the first kiss he remembers.
The heels of Rupert's hands rest lightly, warm and soft, on either side of Daniel's neck, while his fingers dig at Daniel's scalp like he's a rock-climber, and he kisses -- God, he kisses like he's starting fires, like he's still speaking the weather spell. Maybe he is, because Daniel curls his hand into Rupert's neck and pushes forward, like he *has* to.
Like it's not quite up to him, not as Rupert bumps into the table and pulls Daniel closer, opening his legs, bringing them around Daniel's. This has to be part of the weirdness, part of this world where magic's real and bunnies crackle out of thin air and a handsome Englishman tastes like orange juice and pie spices.
Daniel hasn't been surprised all day, not like the others, but right now he is. His body's doing things he didn't know it could do -- hand stroking down Rupert's back, mouth opening until his jaw cracks, tongue teasing Rupert's lower lip until he pants a little, right knee nudging forward and his hips setting up a little rocking motion -- and his skin sizzles like it's being born anew with every touch.
His chest constricts and he has to break the kiss and stare up at Rupert as they both lick their lips.
"Whoa," Daniel says. "You're really good at this."
His hands won't stop touching, roving, looking for something.
Rupert's lips burn and the inside of his mouth feels sticky, thirsty, and when he swallows he can taste Daniel. He flattens his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to bring the taste up stronger. "Am I?" His ankles are hooked around the backs of Daniel's knees, and if he pushed and leaned back he could bring Daniel down on top of him. A little experimental pressure draws him in closer, so close that Rupert can feel his erection, but still not close enough. "I think we both are." So close that he's almost talking into Daniel's mouth, and something like gravity pulls him forward until they're kissing again.
There's a back and forth of tongues, Daniel licking the insides of his cheeks and himself straining for the deep recesses of Daniel's mouth, but it doesn't feel like taking turns. More like refined instinct, like dancing, nature given grace. They're good at this, but beyond that and better, this is good.
This is getting better by the moment, heat welling under his skin and flaring wherever Daniel's hands touch, rhythms growing more complicated as their hips grind and twist together. Rupert still has one hand cradling Daniel's head, but the other slides with blind greed along the planes of his body, finding wide flat shoulders, shallow vault of ribs, long flexing muscles of his back, the knob and hollow of one small hip, and everywhere Daniel pushes into his touch. Daniel's hands are moving too, fingers digging into Rupert's shoulder, fluttering down his spine, a thumb slipping tormentingly up the inside of his thigh, and through a mouth thick with spit and need Rupert says, "Shouldn't be doing this. The others - memories - " but then his lips close around Daniel's earlobe. Daniel moans and he sucks harder, ignoring the clicks of earrings against his teeth, and his hand on Daniel's back pushes up under layers of cloth to a patch of fine-downed skin, so smooth and hot that Rupert's mouth feels hollow with the need to kiss it.
"Daniel," he says, handing Rupert the license. "See? Apparently I live in Sunnydale. Says so there. But --" Daniel (he doesn't think he likes "Danny" or "Dan", which make him think of Math Club for some reason) empties his pants pockets on the surface of the table. "I've got a motel room key, key to a rental car, and --"
As he digs in his jacket pocket, the room fills with more chatter, Randy and Willow and Alex and Tara. Anya and Joan are arguing and Umad's standing off to the side, rolling her eyes dramatically. They're all upset, and Daniel's not sure why. This is weird, definitely, but it's kind of cool.
"Someone's got plans tonight," Randy says, swooping in and taking up the bottle of Astroglide personal lubricant Daniel just set on the table. "Economy size, no less!"
Through it all, Rupert's just looking at him, wearing a faint smile as his hands move in his pockets. He looks relaxed, almost happy, and Daniel smiles back.
"Think I'm on the lam," he tells Rupert. His throat hurts a bit and he ducks his head, coughing, as he adds with a grin, "Congrats on the marriage, by the way."
Daniel thinks this is what's called flirting. He likes it.
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"Rupert!" she says loudly, unexpectedly, and her fingers wrap possessively around his arm. "Come and tell Joan that she doesn't get to be the boss."
Joan, standing by the counter with the young girl-Dawn, Rupert thinks she's called-puts her hands on her hips. Small as she is, she looks formidable. "All I said was that we should go to a hospital!"
"But here we are in a magic shop, and I just know that I have a lot of valuable knowledge. Looks at all these potions and things!" Letting Rupert go, Anya starts to scan the shelves. "Dried coelacanth brains, essence of wolfsbane, powdered pyromorphite, 10% solution of bat's blood . . . what doctor could provide all this?"
Although he hates to think he's the kind of person who'd take mercantile advantage of the ignorant, Rupert finds he can't quite believe in magic. "Anya, perhaps Joan has a point. At least, let's rule out medical problems first."
With evident reluctance, Anya puts a jar of something unpleasant-looking back on the shelf. "Fine. But you're still not the boss, Joan."
Everyone but Anya seems to agree that a doctor is a good idea, so soon and with a minimum of wrangling they're headed towards the door. "-red and shaped like a penis," Randy starts speculating, quite unjustifiably, about Rupert's car, to Anya's apparent amusement. Rupert's just about to tell him to button it when someone opens the door and there are monsters outside, and then everyone's screaming and cowering and shoving heavy furniture to try and block the entrance.
Perhaps he was wrong about the magic.
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"Monsters are real!" Joan says, clutching at Dawn. "Did we know this?"
"Sure," Daniel says. Next to the bottle of Astroglide in his pocket is another, smaller bottle of holy water. And he doesn't *feel* Catholic, either. There was the dream, and the Buddha sitting serenely next to the cash register makes him feel...good. Warm, wrapped in a big sweater. "Why wouldn't they be?"
Joan just looks at him, then the rest of them, and Daniel shrugs. Sure, it's scary, but panicking doesn't seem to be the way to deal. It's only weird when Alexander and the redhead leave -- that makes him nervous, makes his nose twitch -- and when Rupert scoffs at the monsters and magic again.
Daniel figures it's no skin off his nose whether he's right or not, so he keeps mum. Willow and Alex come back, and then it all gets crazy again, breaking glass and monsters inside. One grabs for Joan and gets Dawn by the hair. Daniel's fists unclench, his fingernails prickling sharply, and he feels a *growl*, sour and gravelly, spill out his mouth. The vampire sneers and shoves her back at him.
Joan shoves the stake through the vampire she just kicked and it explodes into dust.
"Rad," Daniel says, and Rupert smiles tightly at him over Anya's head. Daniel scratches his bruised cheek and shrugs again.
"Hell are you talking --" Alex starts to say, then faints.
When he comes to, everyone's splitting up, Joan and Randy heading outside, the rest to the sewers, Rupert and Anya staying in the shop.
"Aren't you coming?" the pretty woman, Tara, asks and touches his hand.
"Think I'll stick around here," Daniel says. "You guys get help. Maybe, like, I know ancient languages." He glances at the Buddha and somehow -- knowledge and forgetting are weird, he feels like an anthropologist in his own mind -- he knows that that's Sanskrit engraving underneath. "Sanskrit."
Anya sorts through the bookshelves and Rupert leans heavily on the counter.
"Anything I can do?" Daniel asks him. Rupert's tie is askew and Daniel's hand wants to straighten it out.
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Behind him there's the thud of a book being dropped on the table, and Anya says, "I've got it!"
"Wonderful. Good work, Anya." Looking at the book, though, Rupert isn't so sure. Habka yqing btollo, the title reads. Animal spells, in the Davniq demon language.
Demon language?
"Anya, are you quite sure?" he tries to ask as she lets the book open at random. Daniel, looking through the first of a large stack of books, glances up at him for a second.
"I'm using my intuition. I am a magic shop owner, after all." She closes her eyes, stabs a page with her finger, and intones something. Not in Davniq, apparently, as Rupert doesn't understand it. For a second the room's air seems to condense into a heavy syrup, then there's a pop and a rabbit appears on the table. Anya shrieks and buries her face in Rupert's shoulder. "Get it away from me!"
Patting her back, Rupert watches as Daniel scoops the rabbit up. "It's all right, Anya. Daniel has it. And it won't hurt you, it's only a-"
"Don't. Say. That. Word." She shudders, presses more tightly against him for a second, then, to his surprise, turns back towards the book. "I must have done the spell wrong."
Well, she's determined, he's got to grant her that. And at least she didn't conjure up anything worse than a rabbit. Given how the day's been going, that's something to be grateful for.
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"Hey, I know Latin, I think --" he says as he comes back into the room. Seven more bunnies, and Anya's standing on top of the table, clutching her book to her chest. Rupert leans against the counter, his arm around the Buddha as he pinches the bridge of his nose. "Wow. Bunnies."
Anya shrieks and Daniel looks around, expecting a vampire behind him.
"Don't say that word," Rupert says wearily, slipping his glasses back on. Daniel's about to apologize when Rupert pushes off from the counter and *winks* at him.
At least Daniel thinks he did. Something happened, but it's over now, Rupert standing by the table and looking up at Anya, pleading with her to come down. Daniel scoops up two more rabbits, white ones this time, and sings a snatch of an old pop song under his breath to them while he hunts the third.
It's sneakier than the others and seems to anticipate each move he's about to make.
Rupert looks at him when Daniel slips past him, still singing, and he looks about to join in when the air crackles and snaps apart, the ceiling lifting and vanishing to reveal a purple, starry sky.
"Whoa," Daniel says, looking upward, forgetting the bunnies, edging closer to Rupert. "Pretty."
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On the table, Anya pushes back her wind-whipped hair and turns to a new page. "Get down from there this instant!" Rupert shouts, crossing the room (mercifully, it is still a room, they've still got walls and a floor) at a run and snatching the book out of her hands. A page rips, making him wince, and Anya crumples it and throws it at him.
"Give that back!" She starts to climb down, notices a couple of rabbits scurrying around with Daniel in pursuit, and retreats back to the center of the table.
"Anya, has it occurred to you that this is the wrong book?"
"How do you know? We haven't tried everything in it yet!" Overbalancing after lunging for the book, Anya catches herself on Rupert's shoulders and clings, somehow resentfully, then draws away with a frown. "Are you always this ungrateful? I don't know how I stand it."
Daniel, holding a rabbit in one arm and dragging a box out of a storage cupboard with the other, looks over with what Rupert is sure is amusement, although there's nothing that could actually be called an expression on his face. Gentle amusement, not mocking, and Rupert knows he can't be an ungrateful person, because he's grateful for this. "Anya, our relationship is hardly the most important concern right now. And in any case I'm not sure we have one." He reaches up to help her off the table. "Come down, the rabbits are-"
Frowning, Anya steps away from his hand. "Are you saying you don't want to marry me?"
"Well . . . yes." This is all absurd, mortifying, and purple sky is turning redder by the moment, but Anya sounds so hurt that Rupert can't help explaining. "Please don't take it personally. I . . . I don't think I'm all that interested in, in marriage. Or . . . women." He can feel Daniel watching him, but he can't look.
"You're gay? And you didn't tell me?" Everything in Anya's posture shows fury, and perhaps it's the bruise-colored shadows this unnatural light casts on her face, or the way the wind distorts her voice, but Rupert suddenly finds her a little terrifying. "Men! You're all liars and pigs. Somebody should - should just take vengeance on you all, that's what I say." She clambers down from the table, ignoring Rupert's attempt to help her, somehow not looking laughable even when she has to take off her shoes.
"Anya-"
"I'm going down into the tunnels. I want out of this horrible place, and I want my memory back, and I want to find out that I was never, ever thinking of marrying you." Clutching her high heels, not even flinching when she has to pass the last uncaught bunny, Anya disappears through the basement door.
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Then Rupert *does* turn, leaning heavily on the table and rubbing the back of his neck, and he looks exhausted and sad and strangely alone. And Daniel doesn't know what to say.
He stows the black bunny in the second crate and scans the shelves for a book he *knows* he saw earlier.
There it is. Veneficus aeris, the lettering on the spine of the small leather volume reads. And again in tiny black gothic letters on the frontispiece, beneath a woodcut of an old man with wind-whipped white beard gesticulating at the heavens.
"This might help," Daniel says, and he's looking kind of at Rupert, kind of at the roiling stormclouds, lemony and steely, over Rupert's shoulder. "Weather spells and things. Probably won't make more bunnies, anyway."
Rupert takes the book the way other people -- Daniel doesn't know *how* he knows this, but he knows -- would accept jewelry. Carefully, almost tenderly.
A splotchy red-and-white bunny leaps over Daniel's foot and he sets off to chase it down. When the last of the bunnies, a big brown lop-ear he wants to call "Xander", is safely crated, Daniel turns back to Rupert.
The air in the room has quieted, gone a little cooler, and the ceiling shimmers in and out of sight. Rupert straightens his shoulders and speaks the incantation in a deeper, steadier voice. Daniel holds his breath and after two heartbeats, the ceiling snaps back into reality.
"Nice job," Daniel says, exhaling slowly. Rupert ducks his head, smiling, then meets his eyes. "And congratulations."
Rupert starts to speak, but then he closes his mouth and just looks puzzled.
"On coming out, I mean. Significant occasion." Rupert stares a little more, and then his smile starts to spread, matching Daniel's own. "Should, like, shake your hand. Kiss you?"
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Rupert takes a deep breath and looks back at Daniel's face. Such a pretty mouth he has, wide smile and a sweet-natured curve to his lower lip. "K-kiss me?" It's a question, full of high-pitched, stammering disbelief, because kissing Daniel is somewhat less likely even than vampires and spells that move magic shops into other dimensions.
It was a question, and he's not sure if Daniel ignores it or answer it by stepping closer. Rupert doesn't move, can't-control of his body has gone to join memory and common sense and the rest of reality-but he doesn't have to. Daniel lays a cool palm on his neck, pulls him down, and Daniel's lips are cool too at first, soft. Warmer as they open, and he tastes salt-sweet as melon, concentrated sun and musk, and Rupert's hands clench in Daniel's stiff hair, hold him still to be kissed, and he's glad this is the first kiss he remembers.
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Like it's not quite up to him, not as Rupert bumps into the table and pulls Daniel closer, opening his legs, bringing them around Daniel's. This has to be part of the weirdness, part of this world where magic's real and bunnies crackle out of thin air and a handsome Englishman tastes like orange juice and pie spices.
Daniel hasn't been surprised all day, not like the others, but right now he is. His body's doing things he didn't know it could do -- hand stroking down Rupert's back, mouth opening until his jaw cracks, tongue teasing Rupert's lower lip until he pants a little, right knee nudging forward and his hips setting up a little rocking motion -- and his skin sizzles like it's being born anew with every touch.
His chest constricts and he has to break the kiss and stare up at Rupert as they both lick their lips.
"Whoa," Daniel says. "You're really good at this."
His hands won't stop touching, roving, looking for something.
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There's a back and forth of tongues, Daniel licking the insides of his cheeks and himself straining for the deep recesses of Daniel's mouth, but it doesn't feel like taking turns. More like refined instinct, like dancing, nature given grace. They're good at this, but beyond that and better, this is good.
This is getting better by the moment, heat welling under his skin and flaring wherever Daniel's hands touch, rhythms growing more complicated as their hips grind and twist together. Rupert still has one hand cradling Daniel's head, but the other slides with blind greed along the planes of his body, finding wide flat shoulders, shallow vault of ribs, long flexing muscles of his back, the knob and hollow of one small hip, and everywhere Daniel pushes into his touch. Daniel's hands are moving too, fingers digging into Rupert's shoulder, fluttering down his spine, a thumb slipping tormentingly up the inside of his thigh, and through a mouth thick with spit and need Rupert says, "Shouldn't be doing this. The others - memories - " but then his lips close around Daniel's earlobe. Daniel moans and he sucks harder, ignoring the clicks of earrings against his teeth, and his hand on Daniel's back pushes up under layers of cloth to a patch of fine-downed skin, so smooth and hot that Rupert's mouth feels hollow with the need to kiss it.
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