This time the hotel Ethan had chosen was large, Western, and luxurious. Giles had been mildly surprised to find Ethan had booked a suite with two bedrooms. Whatever new footing their relationship was on after London and the destruction of the Council, it obviously didn't extend to Ethan making presumptions. Giles had spent several minutes working out whether he was relieved or disappointed at the sleeping arrangements. Not that he wanted to attempt recapturing the decadent days of his youth, but when times got stressful he found he liked the idea of . . . company.

Still, a two-bedroom American-style suite meant two bathrooms, which meant blissful hot showers for two men cold to the bone. They had a surprisingly domestic evening in, with room service bringing up sashimi and saki, which they ate in front of the television as they laughed at one of those amazingly murderous Japanese game shows that encourage people to risk life and limb for pathetically banal prizes. They debated whether the Japanese were only mirroring Western culture or whether they'd perfected it in all its mindless consumerist frenzy

It was rather a shock when Ethan suddenly stopped in mid-commentary on Giles' ancestry and how his descent from a pair of baboons thrown out of the group for being too stupid not to know they couldn't mate with rocks had impaired his critical reasoning facilities, looked at the clock, and declared, "I'm going to bed." Giles had been composing a rebuttal based on the fact that anyone who had willingly worn gold lame pants, no matter how stylish they were in what hip Soho clubs, was hardly in a position to judge the validity of any statement which required intelligence. He watched Ethan retreat into the other bedroom, let the years fast forward in his mind to current reality, then wobbled off to his own bed.

• **

and so am I, wobbling off to bed

askye, that's good. Nice Anya.

when times got stressful he found he liked the idea of . . . company.

More! More! More!

connie, that's turning into something really rather wonderful.

Yes, what Am said, with bells on.

I do hope i can get this finished before they do something dreadful on Buffy. I'm very nervous about various people's survivability.

I do hope i can get this finished before they do something dreadful on Buffy.

I'll settle for 'soon'.

But I'm well behind with Buffy, and I fear I know what you mean. Watching ASH keep his hands in his pockets for another episode may drive me crazy.

(driveby, with messages)

Plei: Roz says she went and read "Closing Time" and that it's "absolutely lovely."

Fay: Roz was/is hoping to go to Harvest, but she's a bit huffy with the organisers; she offered to do a crit panel for them, and they haven't got back to her yet. But if she does go, can I hook you up?

(driveby)

But if she does go, can I hook you up?

Hell yes! Although if she's going to be there in a formal capacity I shall feel decidedly shy/stalkerlike.

Although I suppose my interest in Roz is vaguely stalkerlike anyway, in a she-seems-like-a-nice-lass-and-I-like-her-writing*-but-she-doesn't-know-me-from-Adam kind of way. Darn. See, pretty much nobody in my corporeal life has the fannish love. I mean, there's my formerly-non-fic-reading-friend, who's now been sucked into reading LotR RPS...but the ironic thing about that is that, although I'm wholly to blame for sending her to Calico's stories, I kind of balk at reading RPS still, and so although I share the fannish glee (and the LotR love), I don't really read in her fandom of choice.

Um.

So, yeah - I'm awash with the Anorakish love of BtVS and AtS, and brimming with enthusiasm for fanfiction as a genre/aesthetic/whatever, but my opportunities to wax lyrical and pretentious about it all in person are few and far between. I figured that Roz could happily wax fannish over Cabernet Sauvignon, for she seems both smart and funny, as well as big with the Jossverse love. Which is cool.

* incidentally, did you read Webs ? It's been in the back of my mind a lot lately.

(Fay, do you know that she has a LiveJournal?)

Oh, splendid! I knew that she had had an LJ, but I didn't know she was using it again. (Although possibly the one I found before was an old one. Hmm.) Cool.

Fay, I quoted your original post and she laughed and said "I have absolutely no objection that." So if she does go, I'll intro you in email, or howsoever; I like hooking cool people up.

Yes, we spent two hours on the phone; we're getting into a sort of weekly check-in, which is lurvely. She's teasing me with tales of a show on the telly, not got over here, called "The Bill." Claims they have the best screen villain ever. Which led me to believe she'd never seen Luther Mahoney on H:LOTS, and I was right, so I need to find at least one of the juicier bits of Mahoneyhood and pop it on tape for her (she's got a bilingual VCR).

Off to watch Angel....

(Roz also has her website at dymphna.net - it's called glamourous rags. But I haven't been able to get into dymphna since the host played around and did the April Fools page yesterday, and broke the link. Now it won't acknowledge the host, and I can't get there. And I have two stories of hers I want to read....)