"Blonde" in the first para makes me think female, though.

Deliberately ambiguous, darlin'; Fred's one of those Jossiverse characters for me, who can swing happily either way. I see Darla that way, as well. Difference is, with Darla, I tend to somehow always envision her equating sex with prey, even when she's tender about it. Fred, not so much: she's not a carnivore or a predator in my worldview, she's just cheerfully multi-omnisexual. Feels good! Pretty girls! Pretty boys! Smoke dope and perfect (verb, to perfect) interdimensional particle physics! Roll around and giggle! Sexy! Kissy! Science!

I'm very much coming to like Fred, and it really started when I began seeing her that way after Lorne's spell, when I slowly began grokking her less as a little girl lost, and more as someone who would have been very happy in San Francisco during the Summer of Love.

Very nice Deb. I like your version of Fred. I can also see Spike encouraging the Taser weilding side of her, just for the fun of it.

a bit more:

"You're Spike." It had suddenly clicked in who this gorgeous leggy man must be. Speed, silence, feral grace and a taste for AB negative? With the realisation, Fred got herself under some sort of control, and managed to grin at him. "Oh, sorry, yes I'm Fred and yes Willow called down to say you were coming but no, that wasn't for you. Actually, that was Angel's bedtime snack you just drank, but no problem; there's a few gallons in the fridge." She held out a hand. "Welcome to Angel Investigations."

He ignored the outstretched hand. In fact, he seemed to not have heard a word she'd said. The warm flush turned hot, then cold, with the echoes of old uncertainties. Was he just rude, or was she really so damned unmemorable that he couldn't even be bothered to -

"Um, love?"

She jerked her head up, her lip trembling. "What?"

"Heads up," he said, and then she was wrapped in his arms. She was also on the floor and under the reception desk, having gone over the top of said desk, already wrapped in his arms, before she had time to blink.

A moment later, the quake hit.

The USGS would later confirm a 6.1 magnitude on a previously unrecorded fault running northeast under Sepulveda Boulevard. To Fred, not an Angeleno, it felt like the end of the world. She stifled a terrified shriek and tried to burrow into the depths of the old black leather coat he wore. Somewhere beyond the muffling whipcord muscles and shelter of the big wooden curve above her, something crashed to the ground. Sirens and car alarms began their mad brangling.

It seemed to last forever. When it finally stopped, Spike seemed to know before the final nauseating roll had stopped that it was over. He slid out, Fred attached like a remora to his chest, and stood up, gently detaching her.

"You all right, then?"

She nodded, speechless and shaking. There were running footsteps overhead, hitting the stairs, stopping.

"Spike."

"blonde" may be consciously ambigious, but from a writer like you, who knows words, I saw it as deliberate. Wouldn't blond be sufficiently ambigious, as opposed to the specifically female form "blonde"?

Good grief, did I add an 'e'? Totally invisible to me, and I swear I didn't even see it in Lizard's quote.

Going back to check. My brain's been on wander mode since Saturday (7 hours in high heels and nothing's felt connected since); it ought to have been sans e.

edit: Ha! and realised why I missed it. I'd typoed an 'e: at the end of "blood" and instead of deleting it, my sorry-assed excuse for a brain simply moved it. Thanks, connie. Fixed.

Thank you, deb. Aside from the "rein-reign" thing that hardly anyone ever does correctly in most writing these days--not just fanfic--"blonde" for men is my pet peeve.

Edit: I knew you knew better, which is why it was causing such cognitive dissonance.

Nope, reign-rein is automatic for me. Can't have majored in Euro history without having the various possibilities of the word "reign" (or taken any latin at school, for that matter) burned into even the most tired brain.

But it's a definite wake-up call to have moved that damned e, or actually a pass-out call, as in, sleep deprivation is not my friend.

I know hardly anyone even thinks of horses as anything more than decorative and fun to bet on in races these days, but having so many people not knowing why one "reins in" something, not "reign in", is depressing.

That particular threesome - rain reign rein - were ones we were expected to memorise properly at school. I remember a feisty, sexy little primary school teacher called Miss LeAnza ("call me Rita! I'll tell everyone tales of smoking cigarettes at the movies!") singing a bit of "My Fair Lady" and then choosing a child at random and demanding "Right! WHICH rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane? Spell it!"

And the child had best spell it right.

(yes, my tenses are wandering. I desperately want to sleep but I'm waiting for Nic, and I still need to clean up after Buffydinner....)

I know hardly anyone even thinks of horses as anything more than decorative and fun to bet on in races these days, but having so many people not knowing why one "reins in" something, not "reign in", is depressing.

I will cop to having made that typo (though caught before beta) when writing.

And, well, history geek and major horse geek here. Just sayin'.

Finger/brain disconnects happen.