Okay, while Giles/Ethan is clearly the best enemyship in Buffy, there are kind of a Lot of them, so I gave it a second run.

Let's start by clearing the air: Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike. Both definitely enemyships! Both very much the biggest ships in that fandom, although it feels like twenty years in, Buffy/Spike has roundly won that shipwar. But I never really shipped either of them, I think because = well, if you've been following me for awhile, you might have picked up that I have a thing for characters who measure their lifespans in centuries. But I don't really have a thing for those characters dating teenagers. I don't think it's even really, like, a purity culture thing, I think it's just that, even when I was myself a teenager, it was a "no club that would have me as a member" problem. Like if you've reached your century mark and you still think dating teenagers is a good idea, then you're probably such a fuckup that the teenager could do better? I don't care how much destiny or fate you have on your side, you also have literally all the time in the world, let the cookie dough get nicely firm first. Buffy clearly has a kink for much older men, which I do not judge her for at all, but she's got plenty of time yet to shop around and find one who doesn't want to date a teenager, and that's basically always been my opinion on that particular shipwar.

But! There are plenty of other enemyships sailing that Hellmouth! So here are some other old favorites. In a "no AO3 links at all" special set, because Buffy oldfandom I guess has *really* not moved to AO3, but I was actually keeping bookmarks when I was reading it, and most of them still work!

• One Time Thing by Killa
  Rating: NC-17
  Pairing: Angel/Spike
  Length: One-shot
  Summary: Just a variation on a popular theme. Set after "The Girl in Question." Angel and Spike drown their sorrows, with predictable results.



• Slayers' Dance by erinya
  Fandom: BtvS
  Pairing/characters: Faith/Buffy, mentions Spike/Buffy, Willow/Kennedy
  Rating: PG-13; implied sexual content
  Length: One-Shot
  Disclaimer: So very, very not mine
  Prompt: 144. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy Summers/Faith Lehane. Buffy realizes that there may be more to how she feels about Faith than she thought.
  Summary: Buffy is confused. Kennedy tells her to stop being an idiot. Set post-Chosen, vaguely in Cleveland.



• Romantic Dinner by missmurchison
  Pairing: Spike/Joyce
  Rating: G
  Summary: A romantic dinner gets sidetracked a bit.
  Special note: This is the last fic in a longer Spike/Joyce series set in an AU where a) Spike is not in love with Buffy and b) Buffy stays an only child. They're est rel in this one. The first three in the series sold me on how much better a story choice this would have been than Spike/Buffy, but they seem to only be available on wayback now that allaboutspike is down. I am not linking to wayback-only fic in this series, but here's my Pinboard bookmark linking to the whole series just to prove it was there.

Buffy fandom is really a great place for enemy ships. Buffy/Faith, Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Spike (basically Buffy/Anyone she dated.) Spike/Xander. Spike/Angel. Angel/Lindsey. Wesley (honestly every ship in AtS.) I may have to come back to Buffy fandom again if I run out of good ideas before I hit 100.

But there's one Buffy ship that I look to before all others. One where, if you ship it, I know we're on basically the same wavelength. Giles/Ethan. So canon. So good. Lovers-to-enemies-lovers.

I think what appeals to me most about Giles/Ethan is that we get to see them when they were lovers in their wild youth - living for danger and debauchery, careless of lives and law, theirs and others' - and then we see them again as middle-aged adults. And they've clearly never gotten over each other. But they've also grown and changed. And they grew apart, into very different and very opposed people. But then by the time they're back in canon/post-canon fic, they've started to come back full circle again? Giles gave himself over to the Watchers, to rules and expectations and propriety, but then, when it came down to it - he said fuck the watchers, and lived by his own rules. Ethan gave himself over to chaos, swore himself to powers beyond his control, but when he shows up in canon, he's kind of outgrown the whole dark powers thing; one gets the impression of someone with vast forces at his call who's decided that stuff's boring and he'd rather play juvenile pranks than fight God. And having both tried their way to the extreme and then walked back on their own, they can come back together and actually see each other for who they are again?

Also yes I admit it I'm as weak as Ethan is for early-80s-London-punk-occultist Ripper. But then who isn't?

• Like Dead Flowers by loneraven (one-shot)
  Ripper/Ethan
  Content: sleep deprivation, hallucinations, self-harm, drug use, unhealthy relationships
  I knew just enough about actual late 70s/early 80s British occultists the first time I read this to really appreciate the glimpse into young Ripper and Ethan. I know know just enough more to appreciate it even more.



• Masks (37229 words) by Wolfling, omphalos
  Chapters: 8/8
  Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Rupert Giles/Ethan Rayne
  Additional Tags: Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Epic, Post-Canon, Drugs
  Series: Part 1 of Of Old Mystics
  
  This is the classic long post-Ethan's-imprisonment h/c fic that's the fandom bedrock, you should read it.



• Broken English (20821 words) by estepheia
  Chapters: 6/6
  Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic)
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Rupert Giles/Ethan Rayne
  Additional Tags: Season/Series 08, Male Slash, Road Trips, Angst, Resurrection, Schmoop
  
  Ethan Rayne was dead, to begin with.

Sister! anaross has written the Buffy/Poetry/Spike story! And it's twenty-eight chapters of poems and wonderful and demons and snow and striving and sex and Edna St. Vincent Millay (who is all of those things really)!

My Life Closed Twice

I haven't found much fic to read the past few days, doing a lot of reloading and malingering and whining, and then one of those special stories I wish I was good enough to write shows up on friendsfriends, and oh fandom!

Now I have to go write a villanelle, 'cause I've been away from poetry too long.