Strictly Business: This Time Around
by Fairfax
Carlyle couldn’t sleep, daren’t sleep - it wasn’t safe. The attack had been a blur of noise and disorientation, and he hadn’t the first clue how to defend himself or others. The panic passed quickly, but he’d felt it all the same and now some while later could feel his agitation rising and his sense of control slipping away from him once more.

Seeking a decent book to distract himself with, Carlyle crept along to Giles’ study. For a moment he wondered if it was three in the afternoon not three in the morning, as Giles was seated at his desk, still fully clothed, seemingly wholly awake and talking animatedly on the phone. He glanced briefly in Carlyle’s direction, nodded towards an empty chair, then continued with his conversation.

‘Predictable I maybe, Buffy, but I mean it. Until we we know what you’re up against I would advise you to be extremely cautious.’

There was a bottle of scotch on the table, Giles gestured towards it, eyebrow raised in enquiry. Carlyle poured himself a generous measure as Giles chuckled softly at whatever was being said in response to his comment.

‘Just be careful, and call me anytime you wish.’

Another pause.

‘Well let’s hope so. Goodnight, Buffy.’

To Carlyle, it was as if a switch had suddenly been thrown. Down went the phone, off came the glasses and leaning back in his chair Giles now appeared both sad and tired. The transformation was instant and unnerving, as if it had been another person entirely who’d just been bantering happily with his Slayer and prior to that had offered such formidable opposition to the vampires.

‘Are you all right?’ They asked each other simultaneously, then acknowledged the coincidence with an exchange of smiles.

‘Your first time, I take it?’ Giles asked. ‘You did well.’

‘I got knocked on my arse in ten seconds.’

‘You’re not dead a-and you don’t seem concussed, that’s really not too bad.’

Carlyle regarded his old friend, concerned to see that his expression was the private contained look of someone in pain. He suddenly felt strangely responsible, not just for failing to provide adequate back-up tonight, but for whatever else it was that Giles had endured. Whilst he was still an undeniably handsome man, Giles’ face all too clearly bore the signs of a dangerous and stressful existence.

‘Sealed both our fates that day, didn’t I?’ said Carlyle, running his eyes over the smooth indentation where his finger had once been.

‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ replied Giles. ‘Not like that. Though it was made quite clear at the time that I was only placed on the active Watcher track due to your absence.’

Absence, such a tactful way of referring to twenty lost years. Now he was back Carlyle wondered if he was going to live long enough to be of any use.

‘Are we safe here?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ said Giles not sounding at all concerned. Carlyle found his indifference oddly comforting. ‘In the morning we’ll have to go to Them for help.’

Carlyle didn’t need to ask to whom Giles was referring. Though he could see the sense in that course of action, he really didn’t want to go there.

‘Can’t you put up some wards? You work your magic with the unseen forces around us, I’ll work mine with the books to seek out the right words and this place will be rendered as secure as…as…’

Carlyle floundered trying to find the right phrase to crown his sentence.

‘As secure as a very secure thing?’

‘You never did have much imagination, Nunc.’

Giles drained his glass, then refilled it and topped up Carlyle’s.

‘I don’t have any magic either,’ he rubbed his chest absently. ‘There was an incident - the ability has gone.’

Now that was a surprise; the man that Carlyle had known before had been notorious for his magical prowess. Though he had sworn never to touch magic again, and was deeply and sincerely repentant over the use he had put it to, the fact remained that Rupert Giles was someone who could literally raise hell. This time around, it would seem, everything was different.

‘Look, Carlyle. If you don’t want to do this I understand. Why don’t you just go home?’

For a second it was tempting. He could go back to his house and his books and the safety of his daily routine. But like Giles, he possessed the knowledge that had propelled them both to a state of permanent conflict. Once you knew that everything most people regarded as fantasy was real and deadly, it wasn’t a question of whether you were in or out, just which side you’d be on and how far you were prepared to take it. Illness had robbed Carlyle of his chance to make a contribution; now that he’d been given a fresh opportunity, he wasn‘t going to allow cowardice force him away.

‘No, I have nothing but confidence in this venture.’ His words were brave but his voice betrayed his anxiety and Giles gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘After all you’ve only been working for three days and already the number of Watchers has doubled. Maintain that rate and by the end of the month there will be two hundred and fifty-six of us.’

They both laughed.

‘Excellent, then I can retire.’

‘Would you?’

Giles shook his head. ‘At forty-eight, bit premature don’t you think?’

‘You could sample the many and various charms of normal life.’

‘About which you appear to know even less than I,’ shot back Giles.

That was true. Neither of them had managed to acquire the traditional, aspirational trappings of middle-age. They didn’t have wives, children, well-developed careers or social lives. Carlyle at least knew his financial situation to be secure and wondered if Giles could say the same of his.

‘What would we do in the ‘normal’ world anyway?’ mused Giles, in the vague philosophical way of someone who is well on the way to being drunk,

‘Worry about our cholesterol, play golf and shag our secretaries,’ said Carlyle promptly.

‘To hell with that mediocrity, I’d rather train Slayers and kill demons.’

‘Me too.’

Giles raised his glass. ‘Really?’

‘Really,’ confirmed Carlyle, he clinked their glasses together and they downed their drinks in one.

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