*drags everyone over the finish line*
*except YOU. And you know why*

HA! I love finding things that support my position. Like the Chinese Love Basket. NO! Like Great Literary Taunts!

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." Irvin S. Cobb
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." Samuel Johnson
"He had delusions of adequacy." Walter Kerr
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." Groucho Marx
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." Thomas Brackett Reed
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." Forrest Tucker
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. " Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." Mae West
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." Oscar Wilde
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." Oscar Wilde
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." Billy Wilder

I love Mark Twain. LOVE him. And Oscar Wilde is so wonderfully catty.... (Damn you Stephen Fry for being uncomfortable as him!! That movie should have WORKED!) As I told lynnenne last night, EVEN JESUS MOCKS GALLAGHER.

And as I am impatient, and I'll be opening up comments for concrit, etc., I'll go ahead and post my second request from yesterday's call to write.

Ficlet, Prompt: Xander, Connor, milkshake, french fries, King Ralph, hand jobs
For: entrenous88, who took the prompt and went another way, H E R E.
Rating: Cert. 15 for adultish language, but no nekkidness. Mostly innuendo.
Feeling: Funny, yet wistful. (Warning: Takes place post-NFA/S5)
Weather: Raining, with skies clearing in the late afternoon


~*~*~

Angel was on the phone, arguing with Buffy.

"No, she does NOT have a hairy back the other days of the month, and you dated The Immortal! Leave Nina out of this and tell me what Giles and the others..."

Xander raised his eyebrows slightly, re-adjusted his eye patch - gotta remember to just cock the one. Heh. Cock. - and turned back to Connor who had steadily made his way through half of Xander's lunch while his back was turned.

"Hey! Quit Bogarting my food! Especially if you're going to dip them in your milkshake. Grease and milk are the very definition of wrongness."

Connor, eyes steady on Xander, took another fry, swiped it across the thick shake and popped it in his mouth. He spoke around the food, "fried ice cream."

"What?"

"Fried ice cream. My parents - uh, the other ones - they took me to a place that served fried ice cream. It's good. You should try it."

Xander blinked. Or was it winked because of the one eye? He always meant to ask Giles, but any time he reminded Giles that a psychotic, possessed preacher with a chili-bowl haircut had popped his eye out, Giles would cough and clean his glasses and really, someone should get the man some therapy putty because eventually those glasses were gonna break.

Xander blinked/winked and looked down at his plate, then up at Connor who was slowly sliding the penultimate fry into his mouth and grinning.

"Hey!!"

"Grasshopper: when you can snatch this french fry from my hand..." Connor held it in his palm, well within reach.

"Okay, Wolfram and Hart put KUNG FU in your new memories, but not King Ralph? And they call themselves evil lawyers."

"Hmm, they did put Engelbert Humperdink's entire catalog in my head, so... Pretty evil."

"I bet it's weird having two different sets of memories floating around in the ol' noggin. Then again, you date someone like Cordy long enough and there's 'what you know' versus 'what she tells you really happened.'"

"Uh-"

"Like when we were in Science lab and she had us take the table in the back corner and unzipped my pants during the lecture-"

"Uh-"

"-and used the Over-Helmet Hand Hold I was trying to patent and-"

"XANDER."

"Oh, it's-"

Xander made a fist with his right hand, thumb side down, stroked down once, came up, loosened his grip, a twist, tightened back to a fist, stroked again, pinky finger down this time. He opened his eyes wide, showed his palms and nodded.

"Over Helmet Hand Hold. Anyway, she forgot to turn her class ring around and I couldn't help that I convulsed a bit and turned the Bunsen burner up high and singed her hair, I mean, you have to-"

"XANDER!"

"What?"

Connor pushed back from the table a bit, trying to keep his face neutral. He had just met this guy and didn't think it would be nice to make an "eww" face. "It's not like that. The extra memories. Maybe you should take a nap or something? Loosen up? I'm sorry I ate all of your fries."

Angel slammed the phone down and stomped over to the two of them, hands on hips and nostrils flaring unnecessarily.

"I can't believe she did that to him. I showed her that grip."

Xander pinked.

Angel realized he said that out loud.

Connor looked between the two of them. "Gross. I'm out of here."

"Ten bucks says he tries my Over-Helmet-"

"XANDER! That's my son. For the love of-. And it's the Loose Grip Slide."

"Hey, buddy, you never GAVE it a name until I tried it on you that one night on patrol. I spent years perfecting that in my basement."

Angel rolled his eyes. "Tell me when you've hit the century mark. And you can't patent hand jobs. Spike already tried."

Xander coughed and cleared his throat. "So! Other than Buffy taking matters into her own hands," he snickered a bit, "what's the plan?"

Angel began outlining the latest problem as Xander muttered under his breath, "I knew he'd try and steal that from me. I should never have told him about getting it patented."

~*~*~



If you are uncomfortable with dissecting problems in LJ comments, you can certainly email me at stoney321 @ livejournal . com, no spaces.