( continues...) time without Aunt Helen around to make him feel guilty about it. For a moment, he almost applauds, instead saying “I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

“No,” Buffy said. “That was the last guy. If you say you’re gonna call, please try, okay?”

“Why not? I think you can take me…how’d you do that?”

Buffy looked bored, and like she thought he was teasing her.”In every generation, there is a Chosen One…she alone…forces of darkness…you know. The Slayer?”

“That’s an old wives’ tale, isn’t it?”

She stood up on her tiptoes to peck his cheek, after which he almost wanted to say “but you feel so normal!” but he didn’t. Either cause he’d fallen hard or cause he didn’t want to think where that stake could end up next.

“Well, as you can see, I’m nobody’s old wife and I am she. Her. One of those, anyway.”

I'm starting to love Raylan more and more. He certainly fits in well. And is less of a drip than Riley.

Raylan's righteous...thinks with his penis and has a tendency to be the"Officer" in "Officer-involved" but he's a good guy. Sometimes he thinks he's from Dodge City, though,

Definitely less drippy than Riley. Definitely a lot more exciting!

He might broker an agreement with chicken...he might kill you. That is one of the things about Raylan Givens...although it all comes from a clearly-defined place in his mind, his logic is often not Earth logic...might work fine in Sunny D, though. Although, really, I started this story with a vision of those three geeks filling a long-distance order to Kentucky.(I forgot they don't show up for a while.) Warren's posse had a name, right? Cause the Gentlemen are those voice-stealing demons(definitely a tragedy in an Elmore Leonard- verse, although I bet they'd come up with interesting signs in the Holler) and the Lone Gunmen are on the X-files.

Maybe after this, I'll move "Hush" to Raylan's 'verse. Is it supernatural, or those bastards at the coal company? Loretta McCready could scream. Only I suspect she'd look down at the exploded demon heads and be all "Cool!" or "The rest of y'all better step off if you don't want more of the same." because Loretta is a tough little chick.ETA: I loved the part in the most recent novel where Raylan gives Loretta advice about boys and it's not "Keep your legs closed," instead it's "Be careful with them, because you are better and smarter than them." That, and Tim Olyphant being a pretty, pretty man who might actually live to tell about it if he called me "darlin'" puts me on Team Raylan forever. And, on team Raylan, unlike with Jacob and Edward, you might get to come. I like that in a team, although Book! Raylan gets around a bit more than on TV.

This is totally out of nowhere - a snippet of a scene in which Jethro Gibbs, NCIS, has a thing or three to say to Patrick Jane, Mentalist, about his treatment of Teresa Lisbon. Not even sure what Jane did this time, or how Gibbs figures in, but it was write it or risk having it take over my brain.

Gibbs: [smacks Jane upside the back of his head like he's a probie]

Jane: "Ow!"

Gibbs: "Even for you this is particularly stupid. Now go in there, get down on your knees and - "

Jane: "Propose?"

Gibbs: "No, you ass, don't interrupt me. For God's sake, take your own advice - don't be yourself. You apologize. Then you back off and give her some space. If you don't, I might have to show her how a real man moves on after tragedy."

Jane: "Meh, we both know Van Pelt is more your type."

Gibbs: "Only in looks. She's way too young. It would be like dating Abby."

Jane: "I knew it. Everybody talks about you two, but I knew there was nothing going on between you. By the way, how does it feel to have shot the man responsible for murdering your wife and child?"

Gibbs: "I don't talk about that."

Jane: "You don't talk about a lot of things. I guess I'll just have to come watch you make a boat to find out how you think."

Gibbs: "But no helping. You are pretty, but you aren't pretty enough to get an invitation to touch my tools."

I know just enough about these shows to be tickled by this, WS.

Hee. I'm glad you enjoyed.

This part kind of ended up like "Ethan & Giles, by Elmore Leonard"

It went fine between Buffy and Raylan until she literally kicked him in the junk.Admittedly, it was in a sparring session, so, you know, there was no malice involved, and it might have been his own stupid fault for kidding her about holding back.Not that he was a stranger to pain…he’d made it through boot camp at Parris Island, after all, and he liked to think of himself as a man of the world, therefore familiar with the uneasy border between pleasure and pain, but this was something else again.

It hurt, and it pissed him off and he didn’t like even the faint whispers of Arlo-thoughts that were assembling in his brain like memories of last week’s nightmares. Things like Control your woman. And Teach her a lesson, and other such shit he’d made a boyhood vow to stay way the hell away from.”A real man walks away,” he said to himself.

Maybe Helen told him that, or maybe he got it off some stupid poster at the library…he didn’t know, but Buffy wasn’t making it easy. Looking at him with her big hazel eyes wanting him to talk it out about her mystical fucking destiny as if the whole area below his waist wasn’t throbbing every time he breathed hard. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled out, relieved to be in California where a man might blaspheme in relative peace.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again.

“Yeah, I told you, I’ll just put frozen peas on them for a few hours…I’m reasonably sure you didn’t neuter me, although I guess that’d be tough luck for you, too, huh?”
He tried to smile.

She responded a bit more than was called for when she kissed his forehead and said “The toughest…” like he was some weekend warrior who jammed his fingers playing racquetball. “Just let me know how I can help you deal.”

He rose from her mother’s couch with relative difficulty and said “You know what, Buffy? I think I’ll ‘deal’ better(All of Sunnydale talked weird like that…if he lived to be a hundred, which seemed depressingly likely given his brand-new status as a eunuch, he would never really understand them.) “if I go spend some time in a dark room with a bunch of strange men who don’t even know I have testicles…wait, that sounded wrong. But I’m going to go to a bar, and I’m gonna drink way too much of something brown, and I’m gonna get sloppy and maybe puke in the parking lot. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sounds like a jam-packed evening,” Buffy said. “But it doesn’t sound like dealing.”

“Time-honored method in the Holler. Well, okay, minus the gun fights, but I’m not feeling one hundred percent.”

She looked serious enough to ask him to stay so he said “I’m kidding.” Though he knew he wasn’t.

Sunnydale didn’t have that many bars of the dark and anonymous kind Raylan preferred, so he wasn’t all that surprised when, a couple strong drinks later, he spotted Buffy’s, well Mr. Giles, sitting in the corner with another Brit that Raylan totally didn’t like the look of.There was something in the man’s eyes that said he would do anything,given the right opportunity. Raylan didn’t know if that look truly repulsed him, or just made him homesick, but he tried to put it out of his mind, especially as the alcohol started doing its work.

“Mr. Giles, I really wanted to thank you for what you did in that frat house. I’d like to think I’d done the same, if my emotions hadn’t got the better of me.”

There was no mistaking that Giles looked uncomfortable. Whether it was the praise itself or the fact that it came from him was the part that was hard to make out.”Really, quite all right…it’s all in a day’s work for a…conscientious librarian.”

“No, not at all. I know what you mean to Buffy, and especially now, since we’ve taken our relationship to the next level and all…”

Rayne’s mouth twisted in a mocking smile. “Oh, come now, Ripper…don’t be so modest.This bucolic young man was trying to pay you a tribute…it’s not like they’ve been thick on the ground since the (continued...)