It began as something of a nuisance.
Lots of fine dust in places where it shouldn’t have been. Inside a sealed lift. Along the rim of an upturned teacup. Marring the folds of a suit jacket untouched in a Whitehall corridor. Thin, careful residue. As if London had been sifting through rubble all night.
Some calls came in, filtered through to Special Branch. Nothing frantic. Just odd.
There was a civil servant who kept calling to say his office smelled like a cold fireplace. A night porter went to sleep and woke up with ash on his pillow and said he tasted smoke. A bus conductor who said all his passengers went silent crossing Tower Bridge - as if they were having a moment of silence at a funeral.
Giles read through the reports in their basement office. Ethan lounged opposite. Feet up, cigarette in hand, watching the ashtray slowly fill.
“Not an attack,” said Giles. “Not in the usual sense.”
“A message, then,” Ethan replied. “London’s passive-aggressive love note.”
Giles ignored him. He looked down at the photocopied statements. The same phrases repeated: thin air, heavy feeling, lived in, dusty.
"More like sediment. Detritus,” Giles murmured. “Emotional residue made physical. It’s settling.”
Ethan smiled. “Like after they demolish a building?”
Giles looked up. “Something like that.”
They took the Tube to Waterloo, partly because some of the reports clustered there. Partly because it was easier to vanish through the crowds. They were on the edge of rush hour, a growing tide of damp coats and tired faces. The Underground smelled like metal and breath and yesterday’s chips.
On the platform, Giles crouched and pressed a finger to the concrete lip near the track.
A smear of gray dust came away on his glove. Not soot. Much finer. Soft.
He brought it close to his face.
Ethan watched. Quiet for once. “Well?”
“It feels…spent,” Giles said. “Like old ash. Already burned.”
The wind whipped, a train screaming in. Grit whipped along the platform. The dust lifted, swirled, and then settled in the same place, like a stubborn memory.
They kept following the trail, back above ground. Away from the station, across wet pavement, down an alleyway that smelt like piss. The dust was thicker near older buildings, especially places where grief might have gathered. Churches, hospitals, even phone boxes where people had heard bad news. Pubs where people had wept over a pint.
At a chapel on the north side of Westminster Bridge, Giles stopped.
The windows were filmed with gray. The door, chained shut, had dust filling the creases around the lock. As if something had wrapped it in smoke.
Ethan tugged the chain. “We could go in.”
“We’re not here to break things,” Giles said.
Ethan grinned. “That’s not what you used to say.”
Giles shot him a look. Half warning, half something else. Ethan held up his hands in mock surrender, but his eyes remained bright.
They circled around the outside of the chapel instead. Stepping into the narrow yard behind where weeds were pushing through cracked paving stones. A chipped bowl sat beneath a dripping gutter - half-filled with gray dust that was turning to paste at its edges.
Giles jaw tightened. “Is someone collecting it?”
Ethan crouched beside him. Close enough that Giles could smell cigarettes and rain, and something faintly sweet on Ethan’s coat.
“Nothing ritual,” Ethan said. “No chalk, no salt. Nothing dramatic. Sure it’s not just coincidence?”
“Not all magic needs theatre,” Giles replied.
He lifted the bowl carefully. It felt heavier than it should be. Dense, like the dust was more than merely physical.
The light in the yard was soft. The dust shimmered in a way that made Giles’ eyes ache. Not bright, but visible, so very present. A sensation as much as a sight.
Ethan watched his face, carefully. “You’re thinking about last week.”
Giles didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t need to. They both were.
The Hollow Man. The fix that felt impossibly clean. A recovery that was all too easy.
“Grief disperses. It doesn’t disappear,” said Giles. “And something’s redirecting it now. It’s settling because it doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Ethan’s expression was unreadable. “So London’s the dumping ground.”
“Ugly way to put it.”
“Accurate, though.”
Giles put the bowl back down. “Right now it’s just a nuisance. If it continues, it’ll make people…sick. Not physically. But maybe thin and stretched, like him.”
Ethan’s eyes flicked to Giles’ mouth, and then away. “Then we’ll stop it.”
“How?”
Ethan shrugged. Careless. “What we always do. Find the source. Shut it down. Help the city forget.”
Giles straightened, brushing the dust off his glove. “Forgetting isn’t always a mercy.”
Ethan’s smile softened. “But sometimes it is.”
They took a cab back, neither of them speaking much. London’s sodium-orange tinged streets slid by, wet reflections in the window. Just the city, pretending to be itself.
Back at their basement office, Giles made tea. Left it to go cold. Ethan rifled through some files, restless, then stopped. Watched Giles move around the cramped space.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Giles said.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
Ethan leaned against the edge of his desk. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous, with you,” Giles muttered.
Ethan laughed under his breath. “For me, or for you?”
Giles should have gone back to his reports. Written up a note for Department C and left it at that. Residue, settling, let them monitor the sites. Bureaucratic end to an unnatural problem.
Instead, he looked at Ethan. Really looking. At his easy confidence, chaos held back by charm. The familiar mouth that always seemed like a heartbeat away from saying the wrong thing - or exactly the right one.
“Ethan,” Giles began, then stopped.
Ethan waited, eyebrows raised slightly, as if in mild amusement. But his eyes were sharp and attentive. Present.
Giles swallowed. His throat felt tight. “I don’t want this,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the room, outside to the city. The cases in sheets on his desk like bruises on paper, “to disappear if we stop paying attention.”
“Then don’t look away,” Ethan said softly.
The words landed like a match struck near dry kindling.
Giles stepped closer. He could feel his own pulse, loud in his ears. The hum of machinery under a floor. Ethan didn’t move, but even his breath hitched slightly, like a small betrayal.
Giles lifted his hand and touched Ethan’s shoulder. Then his cheek.
Warm. Real. Not an echo.
Ethan’s eyes closed at the touch. A quiet sound left him, not quite a breath. When he opened them again, there was no humor in his expression. Just desire, stripped bare.
He leaned in. Slow, as if waiting for Giles to stop him if he wanted to.
Giles didn’t.
Their mouths met with urgency, barely restrained. Careful at first, almost tentative, and then less so - a kiss deepening as the dam broke, finally giving permission to move. Ethan’s hand slid under the back of Giles’ coat, his fingers curling there, pulling him closer. Giles felt the pressure of Ethan’s body, wiry, solid and undeniable. His heat cut through the chill that always seemed to cling to the basement.
This wasn’t reckless. It wasn’t careful. And it wasn’t hesitant.
They shed layers without hurry. Coat, scarf, the careful armor of their day - until Giles’ back brushed up against the edge of the desk, cold against his skin. And Ethan was there, close enough that Giles could feel his pulse, quick and insistent. Ethan kissed the line of Giles’ jaw, his throat, his teeth grazing just enough to make Giles’ breathe in sharply.
“You all right?” Ethan murmured. His voice was low, almost reverent.
“Yes,” Giles said - too quickly - and he steadied himself. “Don’t stop.”
Ethan didn’t.
Outside, London kept making its noise. A siren flared and faded. Dust settled on a windowsill. For a little while, none of that mattered.
Later, the light had shifted and the kettle had long gone cold. They sat together on the room’s narrow sofa, shoulders touching, their legs tangled together without thought. Ethan’s cigarette burned down in the ashtray. Giles could feel the imprint of Ethan’s hands, his touch - at his waist, his back, lower - as if the contact lingered under his skin.
Giles was staring at the far wall. The corkboard hug, pinned with maps and notes and pictures. A city rendered in dots and lines, like a body traced.
“We’re alright,” said Ethan, his voice low.
Giles turned to him.
Ethan was watching him, that maddening mixture of affection and mischief. As if to say, See? You didn’t break.
Giles believed him.
He shouldn’t have, perhaps. But he did.
In the morning, the two of them walked out together into the gray daylight. The pavement was damp. There was rain in the air. A street cleaner was sweeping dust into a pan near the curb, then he tipped it away without looking.
Giles watched the motion with more intent than necessary. The neatness of it, the way it vanished. Almost comforting.
Ethan nudged him lightly with his shoulder. “Come on, Rupert. London’s just going to try and make a mess again.”
They walked on, side by side. Not quite touching, but close enough to each other to feel the warmth.
The city settled around them. For now.
Stories from Ripper & Rayne are available in my Alternate Frequencies section.