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...)

( continues...) Council made you redundant. So accept it graciously, even if this young man does have terrible taste in bits of totty.”

Then there was an uncomfortable silence. It was so quiet and still that, not only could Raylan feel his injured groin through the protective covering of Jack Daniels, he could count the individual throbs.
Rayne looked at the both of them like a man in deep thought, at least until he lingered on Raylan’s back until it seemed his eyes would burn through the TA’s cheap t-shirt and Raylan finally felt like he understood what they were talking about in the Women’s Center…he felt objectified. And he did not care for it. “Unless,” Rayne said. “the story is ever-so-much more exciting than all of Jethro’s tiny hints would have us believe…it’s not like you to hold out on me, Ripper.”

“Look, Rayne, I don’t think I like your tone. I’d advise you to be civil or shut up.” He was prepared to do what he had to, but not for the way his voice quivered when he said it.” I think I’ve been more than patient, seeing as you are new to our shores and all, but these insinuations are…not appropriate.”

“Did he really say ‘new to our shores’? Honestly, Ripper, you have the most shocking taste these days.”

Until that moment, Raylan would have taken bets that “Ripper” was some kind of joke nickname, like naming a fat man “Tiny” or a grim one “Chuckles”. He might have kept on believing that until, the librarian, with a suppressed rage that Boyd Crowder might envy, grabbed his countryman’s wrist and squeezed, his face unreadable without his glasses.”Yes, Ethan, do go home. But don’t be a stranger. You know I’d love to thrash you again.” This Ripper lived up to his nickname.

“Damn,” Raylan said. And, just to be safe, he switched to Pepsi as Rayne mumbled something about lack of cell reception and the markets in Taiwan.

Giles cleaned and replaced his glasses. “I’m terribly sorry about that. Mr. Rayne is…difficult.”

“Difficult, like the one part of your past that haunts you no matter what else you do? And you owe him and you hate him…well, then, Mr. Giles, I swear we have that kind of difficult in Kentucky, too, and its initials are Boyd Crowder.”

“Does he worship chaos, too?”

“Near as I can figure.”

Oh, nice. Nothin' like a good dose of Ripper to get the blood moving in the morning. Raylan, dude, next time, wear a cup.

You'd think so, right?

After the ultra-disastrous body-switching thing, although Faith supposed she got a decent ride out of Buffy's cowboy(He seemed to like to be abused...if they were friends, Faith would talk to Buffy about that...ultimately, he might get tired of vanilla superhero love. But, they weren't friends, so that would just be B.'s problem somewhere down the road. Speaking of down the road, Faith had ducked the CoW assholes andbegged somebody at the airport to put her on a plane to anyplace, pronto, feeling like she was trapped in some fucking Journey song. But she must have sounded wicked desperate because it worked.Except now she was on her way to Lexington, Kentucky with only a little of Joyce's money....and, well, sex appeal and her superpowers. And she kind of remembered that this girl she went to juvie with knew a guy from here, if she was willing to drive for a little while to see him. She wasn't exactly willing, but she was standing on the corner of Stranded and No Choice so she promised all kinds of entertaining things to the yokels to get them to drive her into the Holler.Of course, they wouldn't get anything, besides a little pleasant friction up against the gear shift, but by the time they figured that out, she hoped to be making bank for this Crowder guy.She fended off several locals with her darkest “Don’t even think about it, Gomer,” expression and made a careful, yet confident way toward chez Crowder.

“I’d like to see Boyd Crowder, please,” she told the bodacious blonde who answered.

“What do you want with Boyd?” the blonde said, but she stepped back a little and said “Nice pants.”

“Thanks…do you think I could see him today?” It felt weird talking to someone who not only got her number, but played her song back, bluegrass-style.

“Well, I’ll tell you, girlie. It don’t look likely.Boyd, as far as I know, is on his way to California. And he didn’t even ask me to come. I’m just good enough to clean the bathroom, play lookout, and, if I’m real lucky, get him off.Sometimes this life of crime’s just like the hair salon. Only I don’t have to sweep up nearly as much.”

“Well, there is that,” Faith said. “But don’t worry about it. California’s not that great.”

The blonde looked serious then. “Legal troubles?”

“Yeah, well, something like that.”

“You don’t have to tell me. Legal troubles are kind of traditional here. And despite my little hissy fit before, I am generally the soul of discretion. Boyd calls me that. But I always wanted to travel. “

“I can imagine.”

“Are leather pants the style in California?”

“I think I have some in my bag that’ll fit you perfect.”

• * All of the rest of the Scoobies were surprised when Raylan looked at Tara and said “As I live and breathe, you’re Fiona McClay’s girl.Of course, she was Fiona Morgan when I knew her. Man, I had such a crush on her. Looking at her actually hurt for about half a year.”

Tara flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Now that I’m older, I can accept she had a right to like someone else.”

“How did you know that…I was, you know?”

“Well, I heard there was a daughter, and if you’ll excuse me, you’re her spitting image. But you have the McClay chin. I could spot that chin in a line-up…not that I would have to…the McClays are good folks, a mite severe maybe…”

Raylan couldn’t miss the cloud that came over the girl’s face. “You could certainly say that,” she said and tried to laugh.

Raylan wished he’d never been a boy on the baseball team with a broken heart, who followed Fiona out to the woods to see what she liked better than she liked him, and was surprised to find Fiona, not with some point guard or boy from town, but just out there in the woods with a bunch of Mags Bennett’s cheap candles talking to herself. When he saw her pencil fly, he’d been afraid. So he did what he’d been taught and made fun. It took the heat off him with everyone, even Arlo. But the Holler was small, and pretty soon, even people on the wrong side of things like the (continued...)

( continues...) Givens and the Crowders crossed the road when they saw Fiona coming, which left her feeling like she needed to wash her sins away with Benjamin McClay, who was so much older and more sanctified.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, “that I didn’t write when your mother passed. Aunt Helen said y’all came out to California, but you know, small towns and their rumors.”