Deb, I know this is far behind, but:

Everyone is not saying a word about last installment of Needfire and I used Pink Floyd and I need to know if it works there.

I liked the way you handled the dreaminess quite a bit. Reminded me of alleged activities of my almost forgotten youth. I had one, possibly weird, question.

You said they made love in the doorway. I want to know, standing up? laying across the lintel? On the steps? Just a little more detail?

"Are you asking me?" Gunn raises a brow, and looks ready to answer.

"No. The question is rhetorical." It isn't. It's just part of what he's been trying to sort out for himself for the last couple of years, and he doesn't need to hear all the arguments against it from someone else's lips.

"Fine. You want to just keep on hating yourself, go right ahead." Gunn's pacing around the place, looking uncomfortable and jumpy. "I told Fred I'd make sure you're okay, told Angel I'd talk to you, so I guess I'm..." he stops in front of the table, stops talking mid-sentence and turns to look at Wesley, guilt and accusation and question in his eyes. "Shit. Fred didn't mention--"

"Fred didn't know." They didn't really talk about Lilah. Or about anything personal. Just books and theory and all the things she couldn't, or chose not to, share with Gunn. "I didn't tell her."

"Typical." Gunn's back to familiar territory, all the easier to lash out with. "You keep all this crap to yourself, expect us to read your mind."

"Fifteen minutes," he says quietly.

"What?"

"It took you all of fifteen minutes to find a way to assign me the blame." It's not really fair of him to point this out, but it's his home, and it's his loss, his guilt they're talking about, and he doesn't especially want someone else's input on either. Besides, it's not like he asked for company, so he doesn't need to be polite.

"You shut me out first, Wes." There's an exhaustion in Gunn's voice he hasn't heard before, a quiet matter-of-factness to it. He gestures at the table. "Did you know when we found her?"

"Not until I went back for her things. Knowing Lilah, she wouldn't have bothered to tell me." He leans forward and grabs a piece of the bread, pulling it into smaller pieces and worrying those into little balls.

"That why you went off the deep end?"

"Part of it. If that's why she stayed... I told her to go underground, to go somewhere safe. If she stayed because of me, because of us, because she might have been... then I'm the one responsible for what happened."

"Right. Because the rest of us don't have free will." Gunn lets out a mirthless laugh. "I'm remembering why it is I dumped your ass."

"I wasn't talking about us, Gunn." He sets the mutilated bread back on the plate, and starts in on the next piece. "I'm not sure why you're even bringing it up. Or why you're still here, for that matter."

"Maybe because I still love you."

That isn't the response he was expecting. Maybe the ulterior motives weren't what he thought they were. When he looks up, he realizes Gunn looks just as shocked at what he said as Wesley was to hear it.

He sighs and stops his fidgeting. "It's a bad habit. Loving me, that is. It has an alarming tendency towards fatality."

Plei, "Alone"? I think your spellchecker hates you.

Possible. Where is it? It's more possible I just typed it wrong.

Also, Steph, I've been thinking about your story. I was wondering about Buffy's voice. It's pretty good for this season, but, this season she's been kind of generic. My eyes glaze over when she starts lecturing. I really liked the point where she got harsh with the SiT because it didn't read monotone. However, I'm thinking specifically of the point where she's telling Faith that they've tried to kill one another in the past but now they have to work together. Faith has already said she's come to help, so Buffy is doing her boring speechifying thing again, at least that's how it read to me.

D'oh! Found it, Connie. Thanks.

Alone. But it's not the same, not really. Alone was turned. Lilah wasn't. Alone was good, or at least fighting for it. Lilah wasn't. Alone was worth grieving over. Was Lilah?"

I think this is what Connie meant.

I liked this a lot, schmoop and all.

Oh, yeah, I see the words "Plei" and "Wes/Gunn" and I got to a very happy place.

I'm pulling together "Desperate Times" for distribution, I'm very happy.

Alonna has been added to my spellcheck, which is what I get for writing and watching Alias at the same time.