And I like Xander's noise.

That was my best approximation of it. I swear, I can hear Xander when I write his dialogue.

This is infuriating. I had a title for the damned thing in my head in the car (doing errands) and it's gone....

I like "Trust".

But that's me with the pith and the single words and all.

RSVP!

I thought she should call it "RSVP".

(thanks for the pith and single word mention, Ms. M)

Hmm -- I like RSVP...

I'm still wanting to do something that's a twist on "This Year's Girl."

I think you captured Xander's startled sound perfectly.

I like Trust but if you can find a twist on This Year's Girl that would be good, but I'm not good with the naming of things.

This Year's Girl

Same Model, New Features?

Heh. That's closer...

Sorry. Forgot to spellcheck.

The beginnings, v. rough, of the Gunn/Wes get back together piece.

In retrospect, it's obvious he became something of a Bedlamite after Lilah's death. Everything--his fling with Faith, falling into an ill-starred and ill-advised relationship with Fred, pummeling Lorne into unconsciousness when the demon had the misfortune (not to mention poor taste) of telling a lawyer joke while he was in the room (it took Connor, Gunn, and Angel five minutes to pull him off of Lorne, and he quit the agency shortly thereafter)--seemed to re-enforce the idea. Lord knows, Fred told him as much when she broke things off after a long couple of torrid (yet curiously tepid) months. She also told him he might as well be married to his guilt. She's probably right.

It's time--long past time--to put Lilah's demise behind him. Demise. Such a quaint, clean word to associate with such a harsh, messy end. He's not sure why he uses it. It's not a term he associates with any of his other lovers who have shuffled off this mortal coil. George, best of friends while they were at the Academy, briefly something more when they were through with their training and at loose ends, dead when Headquarters blew up. Virginia, the most utterly bland and banal of deaths--car accident in Berlin. She'd been speeding. Faith, the unlikely savior, dead alongside Buffy. No fancy words to slip around the reality of it, they all simply died.

But Lilah gets demise, and passing, and any number of polite obfuscations, and it's been two years to the day since he found her (found them, entwined like lovers in flagrante delicto and he the cuckold, and yes, thank you, he does feel cheated), two years since he--

Wesley doesn't drink very often anymore, and never to excess unless the occasion warrants it, which this does. He pours a glass of scotch (not his brand, not tonight), defiles it with ice cubes (three of them: no more, no less), and then opens the box on the table, removing the items within slowly, one at a time. Each withdrawal is followed by a large swallow of her scotch, a melancholy ritual he repeats until the box is empty and the glass has been refilled a good half-dozen times.

Hairbrush, toothbrush, lipstick, one stocking. Those were the things that were left here, unclaimed by anyone until he gathered them together in the first wave of grief. One picture--grainy, and not the best angle--stolen from the A.I. files when he left the team for the last time. A box he wishes he hadn't found, salvaged from the contents of her makeshift bunker, still sealed, the implications of its presence amongst her things enough to rattle him even now.

Little props left over from a black comedy of errors, its ending either tragic or an especially farcical bit of poetic justice, depending on how much one has had to drink. He's had quite a bit, and he's still vacillating between the two.

He's almost to the final scene, almost ready to remove his wallet and place the last prop amidst the rest, when he hears a knock on his door. He jumps at the noise, sloshing scotch over his hands and soaking the cuffs of his shirt. The reverie snapped (like a twig, or a neck, or perhaps his sanity), he pushes himself away from the table and goes to answer it.

It's Gunn, which doesn't make much sense, and he wonders if he's drunk enough to be seeing people who aren't there. Of course, he never sees the living, so it has to be Gunn, choosing to stop by for... for what?

"Fred called me," Gunn says as he lets himself in. "Told me what day it was, that you shouldn't be left by yourself in case you did something stupid."

That's right. Fred was here for the first anniversary. He doesn't remember much of what he said or did, but he does remember that most of it was ugly, and that Fred decided it was the last straw. So his ex-girlfriend has called their mutual ex-boyfriend to help him deal with the anniversary of his ex-lover's demise. There's that word again. The pendulum has swung back to farce. Really, how can it be avoided?