Entry tags:

btvs, frao, giles/ethan, magic

"Adonai", Giles/Ethan, FRAO
This is a Giles/Ethan story written as a pinch-hit for antennapedia's Antique Roman ficathon, for a request from Antenna herself. It contains explicit sex and a large helping of magical ritual. Further notes to follow the story. Thanks to kivrin for thoughtful beta.



"It's never been done before."
Ethan snorted. "You don't know that. You can't even say for certain that it might have been done but not recorded. You haven't been in every obscure library in the world."

"Yet," Rupert muttered. He got up and paced their living room, a frequent reaction to Ethan's lounging. Ethan hadn't yet bothered to get out of bed, let alone fold it up again so there was room to pace. "If you want to try sex magic for this, why not use the Star Sapphire? Already been some experiments in adapting that to group use."

"Yes, but don't you want to try something *new*? To be the first to pioneer a new magical application?" Rupert did not answer, and Ethan snorted again, sitting up and pushing away the sheets. "So what's really bothering you, Ripper? Is it the idea of putting sex into something sacred and holy?" His mocking tone twisted the words "sacred" and "holy" into sneers. "Or is it just the idea of the kind of sex I'm proposing?"

Rupert's silence gave him away. He picked up a pack of fags off the mantel and lit one with fingers that weren't quite as steady as they wanted to be. Ethan watched him with hooded eyes as he took a long, calming drag.


"That's it, isn't it." Ethan got up and confronted Rupert, hands on hips. "You don't want to bottom."

Rupert puffed hard, tried to think, and then burst out, "Look, Edie, just because you like taking it up the arse doesn't mean that everybody does. I'm not--" He broke off, before he started stammering again.

"Not what? Not a queer, a nancy, a nelly, a ponce, a poofter--like me?" With his hands on his hips, head, cocked, lips pursed, Ethan looked as feminine as he could manage, being naked. Deliberately provoking.

Rupert shrugged. "I don't mean it that way." He put down the cigarette, took Ethan by one thin wrist, and pulled him close. "I'm sorry, Edie. It's just that taking it isn't my scene, and I wouldn't want to spoil the, the working by hating it or having to stop."

Ethan accepted a kiss and leaned n Rupert, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. "I don't think you could spoil it," he said. "I think that doing something unusual like having me fuck you for once will give the operation extra power. There's much to be said, sometimes, for going against the grain." He smiled. "And if it works, think of the results! That kind of a bond between us, as between the soul and the Genius--that much more power, singly and together--and each of us to *be* the god for one another--"


He kissed Rupert, distractingly, and Rupert allowed himself to be distracted from his niggling worry that the operation was simply not wise.


Ethan cast the chart, being better at maths than Rupert, and set the hour of the operation for the following Sunday. He allowed himself to be persuaded to type out the ritual, specifying the parts which each was to perform and how they would cooperate on what was ordinarily a working for one person. Rupert, meanwhile, handled the details, as he usually did: cleaned the bedroom that served as their temple, cleaned the rest of the flat (and caught up on the dishes), and made sure they had all the supplies. He also critiqued Ethan's choreography for the ritual and nagged his lover to make sure they both had the text memorized, including the "barbarous words" that were such a significant part of it. When they had sex that week, he didn't object when Ethan tried to touch his bum. A magician had to sacrifice for the art.

There was no sex the day of the ritual, not even a wank, and no eating, either. Rupert drank his tea, but without milk or sugar. Ethan consumed nothing but one small dried mushroom about an hour beforehand and washed the taste from his mouth with black coffee. Rupert fretted, setting up the candles and the banners, mending a tear in his robe, setting the coals alight sufficiently ahead of time that they'd be ready for the incense when it was time to begin. He made sure to put the lube in the temple, too, concealing it under the altar.

Ethan took the chilly ritual shower first, coming out with tendrils of hair snaking across his forehead, a pink Medusa with a prick. Rupert took longer, cleaning himself inside as well as out. They met at the temple door precisely one minute before the appointed hour.

By the time the candles were lighted and the incense on the coals, they could feel the circle building, responding to their intention. Rupert carried the salt water around, sprinkling the perimeter and the altar. Ethan took his turn with the censer, swinging so vigorously that the whole room was clouded with frankincense.

Candlelight gleamed liquid on the ritual sword as Ethan raised it for the banishing ritual. As he moved east, south, west, and north, Rupert held the center, visualizing the pentagrams as Ethan drew them and intoning the names of power inwardly as Ethan did so aloud. Having completed the banishing, Ethan laid the sword on the altar, bowed, turned to Rupert, and bowed again. Rupert returned the bow, approached the altar, bowed, and retrieved his wand. It was a good wand, he thought, momentarily distracted; a branch of apple wood cut from a tree on his grandparents' land, stripped, sanded, rubbed with oil until smooth. It gleamed, too, as he raised it to draw the hexagrams, invoking the planets to their purpose. Behind him, he felt Ethan murmuring along, backing his work as he had backed Ethan's.

When the planetary invocations were done, the circle was set. The boundaries of it were a faint glow to Rupert, glimpsed only from the corner of the eye, defined more by the smoke of frankincense coiling against them. He could almost see the afterglow of the pentagrams and hexagrams; he could definitely feel the energies they'd invoked, presences more than human.

Of course, they'd done that sort of thing dozens of times. Now came the new part, the exciting part. Rupert took a deep breath to clear his mind, then pulled his robe over his head and deposited it behind the altar. Ethan stripped as well and dragged out the mat and cushions, positioning them in the center of the circle. The two young men faced each other across the mat and began reciting the invocation together.

"Thee I invoke, the Bornless One.
Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens.
Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day

Thee, that didst create the darkness and the Light.
Thou art ASAR UN-NEFER:
Whom no man hath seen at any time.
Thou art the Truth in Matter.
Thou art the Truth in Motion.
Thou hast distinguished between the Just and the Unjust.
Thou didst make the Female and the Male.
Thou didst produce the Seeds and the Fruit.
Thou didst form Men to love one another, and to hate one another."

Their voices blended with surprising ease, loud in the close, crowded dimness of the temple room. The candles flickered, and the smoke swirled on their breath.


Rupert turned to the east and felt Ethan come up behind him, back to back, buttock to buttock, sharp shoulderblades nudging him. Rupert took a deep breath, filling his belly and then his chest, and chanted out the barbarous words, "Ar... thi-a-o...." They rumbled through the circle, strings of vowels, fragments of Greek and Hebrew, syllables that had no meaning in any language known to man. As he changed, Ethan breathing with him, he saw the figure forming at the boundary of the circle, a coalescence of smoke and flame, a movement of the banner, a faint yellow figure with two heads, two arms, two legs, two pricks, like something out of Plato.

When Rupert finished the chant, he and Ethan rotated, bodies still touching, so that Ethan faced the boundary and recited the admonition: "Hear me, and make all Spirits subject unto Me; so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth, on dry land and in the water; of Whirling Air,
and of rushing Fire, and every Spell and Scourge of God may be obedient unto Me."

They parted, to move to the southern quarter of the circle. Here Ethan faced outward and chanted, his voice twisting and thickening on the strange phonemes: "Ar-o-go-go...." Rupert breathed when Ethan breathed, echoing the chant in his mind, feeling the resonance of it in his throat and chest even though he wasn't vocalizing. Then he swiveled around and faced outward, and saw the rampant gryphon of red flame, the power that they had created, and commanded it to hear him and make all spirits subject unto him.

And so to the west, where Rupert chanted and saw the energies flow like water into murky blue, into the shape of a woman, into a figure with breasts and a penis but no balls, its hair rippling in an invisible current, and Ethan commanded her to hear him and make all spirits subject unto him. And then to the north, reversing their positions, so that Ethan chanted the last long string of barbarous words and Rupert spoke the command to the thing that crouched there, a tree growing from a rock, or a rock engulfing a tree, glowing green and black.

Now. To the center of the circle, naked, sweating, facing one another. As one Rupert and Ethan stepped onto the mat and gripped hands. Ethan was already hard, cock swelling with the energies they had raised and focused, and the sight of his arousal, the glitter in Ethan's eyes, brought the power down into Rupert's belly, and he felt himself getting hard, not quick and soon as usual, but slowly, in slow sensual degrees that he could feel. His eyes did not leave Ethan's as they spoke.

"This is the Lord of the Gods:
This is the Lord of the Universe:
This is He whom the Winds fear.
This is He, Who having made Voice by His commandment

is Lord of all Things; King, Ruler and Helper.

Hear Me, and make all Spirits subject unto Me:

so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether:

upon the Earth and under the Earth:

n dry Land and in the Water:

of Whirling Air, and of rushing Fire:

and every Spell and Scourge of God may be obedient

unto Me."

Rupert dropped Ethan's hands, turned around, and lowered himself to his hands and knees. He sank into the familiar breathing pattern for control, four beats to inhale, four beats to hold, four beats to exhale, four beats to hold. Ethan was gentle but thorough with the lube, his breathing matching Rupert's and Rupert's his, and Rupert could feel the spirits waiting, the circle holding, the whole universe waiting for what would happen next.

Ethan gave him a gentle tap, and Rupert turned around. Ethan was settled on a cushion, kneeling with it tucked between his heels and his buttocks. He reached out, and Rupert moved in, straddling Ethan's thighs, and reaching behind him, and after an awkward moment with three hands fumbling, the head of Ethan's cock was just inside Rupert's arsehole.


Together they took a deep breath and commenced the next phase of the chant: "I-e-o-u... pur...."


The weight of his body, and the strange relaxation brought by his intense focus on the chant, eased Rupert closer to Ethan. He began to tremble as Ethan got deeper inside him, but it did not show in his voice. He gripped Ethan's shoulders with steady hands, and his cock snugged against Ethan's belly, throbbing to the one beat that ruled heart and breath and voice for both of them in this moment.

The chant ended, and Ethan leaned forward and kissed Rupert, tenderly, more so than he ever had. Rupert smiled, and nodded, and they finished the invocation together.

"I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the feet:
Strong, and the Immortal Fire!
I am He! the Truth!
I am He! Who hate that evil should be wrought in the
World!
I am He, that lighteneth and thundereth!
I am He, from whom is the Shower of the Life of Earth!
I am He, whose mouth ever flameth!
I am He, the Begetter and Manifester unto the Light!
I am He, The Grace of the Worlds!
'The Heart Girt with a Serpent' is my name!"

Ethan's thighs quaked under Rupert's, and he groaned aloud. He thrust up, once, and came. Rupert felt the force of it shooting up through him, rushing through his cock and pushing out his own orgasm, a long hot spill against Ethan's belly. Ethan's hands were on his waist, Rupert was gripping his shoulders still, and as their eyes met again they were dazzled by a column of golden light shooting up between them, like a joint orgasm of the spirit. Their eyes followed it upward as it pierced the circle, the ceiling, as it opened the way to the night sky, to the depths of space; and as it began to fall back, an even brighter, more golden ray followed it back down, burning, drawing together the spirits of the four quarters as it descended into the circle, and it crashed down on them and Rupert came again, crying out, or at least it felt like an orgasm, an outpouring of his whole body, his whole being, as something else poured in.

For a moment he could not think, feel, hear, see, he was completely enclosed in something else, and that something was the golden energy, and it was the other man. He could see, and be seen, and there was nothing between them, and the darkness was utterly comprehended by the light.

"Adonai," the other man said, and they both knew it was true. My Lord, my higher self, my holy guardian angel. Union.

When they could see normal reality again, they were lying side by side, still half stuck together. The smoke had cleared a little, and the candles had gone out. Of the circle and the energies it had contained, there was no trace; the room was utterly clean, as clean, in fact, as if there had never been any magic done there at any time.

"Well," said Ethan, and began to disentangle himself.


"I'm starving," Rupert said, which was true. He looked at the large wet spot on the mat.

"So am I, and desperate for a fag." He touched Rupert's arm lightly. "Come on, let's get something to eat. We'll clean up later."

"All right."

Rupert used the toilet and washed his bottom. He was a little sore, but not much; the ache inside was pleasant, a reminder of his connection with Ethan. He'd let Ethan fuck him again, purely for the fun of it. Or for another magical working. This one had worked, surely. He could feel it in his chest, in his belly, in the top of his head, the major power centers--a feeling at once of centredness, of being fully present in his skin, and of being linked to Ethan by an unbreakable chain. He would embody Ethan's higher self, and Ethan would embody his; surely there could be no higher gift of lovers one to another. Adonai.

As they headed out to the diner, Rupert dared to ask, "D'you think it worked? that we're permanently connected?" Do you feel it, too, he wanted to say, but dared not.

Ethan stopped on the doorstep, flung an arm round Rupert's neck, and kissed him, intimately, heedless of any watchers. The word echoed in Rupert, down so deep that it could barely be heard: Adonai. "Only time will tell," Ethan said, smiling.

---

The request, from antennapedia:
Characters or pairings you'd want with Ethan: Giles, either gen or in
a pairing at your discretion
A brief prompt or three things you want: magical explorations, a
significant first of some kind, an early success
Two things you don't want: heavy angst, Ripper as multiple personality
Does your request require comics canon? no
Maximum rating you'd like: any

"Adonai" is closely based on an actual magical ritual generally referred to as "The Bornless Ritual" which derives from ancient pagan Hellenistic magic; the version I followed may be found here. The interested reader may observe that I have changed certain details and left out others, but anyone who wishes to read further will find plenty of information on the Net and in actual paper books, often of a smelly kind.