The Sphinx

They're not what he expected. Oh, he's spoken to Wesley on the phone, of course, but all he'd got from that was the terse, harried voice of a man trying to deal with things completely beyond his control, and Miles had simply been glad that he wasn't involved.

Roger's son he remembers thinking, and devoting his attention to the problem, and not to the man requesting help.

But this isn't Roger's son. This is Elaine's, with the same warm eyes and slightly crooked grin that looks sad even when it's not, the same long-limbed languor that he remembers from countless late nights in shabby student accommodation.

The same faint music, like a long-ago struck bell, of hearth-magic, heart-magic, leaves and soil and the glow of an evening fire.

"Miles," The warmth is in the voice, as well as the eyes, slightly unfocused from poring over the papyrus charts he seems to have charmed his way into looking at - no, Miles chastises himself, unkind, Wesley's qualifications have earnt him the right to look at all of this. "I didn't know you were in Cairo."

"No, I came to look at - oh, you already are."

"Irresistable, isn't it?" Wesley asks, and pushes the scroll towards him. "All yours. I need to get home."

"Home?" He's unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

"Mm, we have a house here."

"But the library's open for -"

"It's nearly sunset," Wesley says patiently, and Miles feels an odd little shiver of surprise run down his back, as though a drip of cold water had cut through the sweat of the day. Hiding in plain sight? Or simply unconcerned?

"Oh," he says inadequately. "Yes, I suppose you need to get back to -"

"Don't, Miles." Still gentle, still half-drowsing, not even a hint of threat. "You're the last one to care." Wesley smiles. "Come for dinner." He laughs quietly. "We're not bad at cooking, you know."

*

He goes back with Wesley to the house, and is surprised at it. Stucco and whitewashed plaster, iron balconies and warped shutters. No different from any other half-decent house. Linen curtains, shading the rooms.

The call of the muezzin in the still air, and Illyria the God-King, more beautiful than he had even heard of by rumour, out on the balcony, absorbing the chants, her head tilted back to the last of the setting sun.

"Wes, we got that coffee again..." A young man with an eyepatch - Wesley's partner in the firm, obviously - coming out of the kitchen. "Sorry, I tried to use the grounds for supper, but there's still about a ton...oh, hey, sorry, didn't realise we had guests. Hi, I'm Xander."

"Miles," he says rather faintly.

"Oh, the watcher guy." Xander nods at him in a friendly manner. "Want a beer? We got ice today, so it's cold."

He takes a beer, and looks around him. At tiles laid out on a table, chosen for colour rather than value, and half of them already on one of the walls. Reproductions of tomb paintings, covering the whitewash, the colours fresh and glowing and exact. Nut holding up the heavens, her belly a canopy of stars, Pharoah after Pharoah lining the skirting board, enthroned and in battle, accepting lotus flowers in elongated hands.

A sleepy vampire, sprawled on the couch like the King of Kings, smirking at him, moonlight amid the dying glow of reflected sunset, his fingertips like pearls against the darkly tanned skin of Wesley's neck as the other man sits on the floor like any born inhabitant of the city, stealing the bottle of beer from its pool of condensation on the wooden floor and drinking deeply.

"Dust in your brain?" It's a sleep-fogged grumble, letting Miles know that the smirk is more of a default setting.

"No, just my throat." Wesley passes the bottle back.

"Shouldn't invite watchers, then. Carry it in clouds."

"Mmm." Wesley smiles, but not at Miles, catching the pale fingers in his own and bringing them to his mouth for a kiss. "Kraken."

"Better-looking."

Wesley twists around, and Miles can't see his expression, only a burgeoning pout on Spike's face, replaced by amusement as Elaine's son says, "Always. It's the lack of slime."

"Huh." Spike leans in for a real kiss, and Miles finds himself unable to look away, because this is the magic, here, this odd sleepy tenderness, a woven spell that dims the room to a dream-world.

Then Spike is sitting up, and Wesley draws away, and it is as if that moment had never been.

*

They eat dinner, which is probably goat, and a coffee-and-spice sauce that is oddly delicious. Wesley brings out wine, dark, heady stuff from Lebanon, smelling faintly of resin and cinnamon. Illyria glows like lapiz-lazuli in the candlelight, eating in the old way with fingers and flat bread, strangely and precisely neat.

"I know how to get camels, to take us to the Sphinx," Miles says, apropos of nothing, and realises he is slightly drunk.

"The camel only has one hump," Xander agrees, and Miles realises they have invited him into their home in every single way imaginable, because not only is he supposed to understand that to be agreement, but he has accepted it as such before he has even fully processed the words.

None of them are any good at riding camels, though they are all very good, even Illyria, at supplying utterly filthy rhymes about it. But it's worth it. It's worth it to see what Miles has thought he was innured to, believed commonplace, a source of ennui.

They ignore him, spellbound and starlit, Spike climbing up to sit on one enormous paw and grinning down at them, before tracing, awestruck, old graffiti in the sandstone. Dates from 1790 and before, a whole new history engraved in something that stands for time itself.

"I am older even than this..." Even Illyria sounds awed.

"You're older than dirt, honey."

"No." And Miles watches a God-King snort with laughter. "Dirt came first."

Wesley climbs with a good deal less grace up to where Spike is lounging, and whatever they are saying is private even from the still air of the desert. The night is for lovers, for magic and the joy that the gods grant, and in trying to give them something to pay them back for their bread and wine and salt, Miles has been given something in his turn.

Miles can watch, and for once it is not a burden.