What's your favorite thing to do to relax?

You know, I'm really not all that picky, and maybe that says some things right there that I really don't feel like addressing right now. But for the longest time, for a word like that, you just learn to take it when it comes.

I like to yell so loud it makes my throat raw, and baths so hot that the bubbles sting, and I forget the dirt was ever there. I like pancakes, well breakfast in general really. But anytime that there can be talking and food, sharing the space and not all shoved together? Or one lost, sacrificed for the other? That's something that more than relaxes. I like to read my Physics textbooks before bed. And I like....love, calling home, and talking to my folks. Something about it settles, relaxes from the inside out. So much time's spent trying to get there the other way, picking and pampering our outsides, as if that'll make the hurts less visible. So the relaxing can come from there, because our reflection's at least a little easier to look at that way.

But sometimes, most of all? I love a good ramble.

Letting all the words come together, not trying to censure them, or myself, because those can be different things, and I've never really liked how people tried to take control of words, make them all their own...borrow, but don't take, because I might go looking for them sometime, trying to make myself heard, or seen, or even...and maybe I'm not so afraid of that anymore either.

That's more than relaxing, and ever so much better than keeping it in.

Roomates -- For thelovelorne

With a nervous sort of energy Fred moved through her apartment, checking the seabreese ingredients she'd purchased from the small package store up the street, making sure the new stero she'd just gotten that afternoon was indeed working. And she wasn't really nervous, that wasn't it. But the excited energy that seemed to hum in her ears certainly felt a lot like it. And sounded? A lot like Lorne.

The moment they'd connected on the phone it felt like she started talking about her extra room, how lovely Boston could be, and offering him a place there, if he wanted it. It was a little bit after her ramble they finally got to his actual plans. But they worked together...and everyone was going to be that much closer. Cordy seemed to be doing at least a little better, and would be home soon. Angel was back. Wesley smiled now, on successive days that built up one after the other...and now Lorne. Only Charles was left, somewhere that she couldn't reach.


But mostly, it was better. And right. Fred wondered if everyone else noticed it too, and she paused at the couch to softly pet the two kittens that were sleeping there in a warm jumble of fur. Maybe it was just the part with the two years, how sundenly and sharply two different lifetimes could be thrown into sharp relief. Because that's what it felt like. Cordy'd been gone, and Fred had felt that wear on all of them. Angel and Wesley worked so much that she'd hardly seen them at all, except for the current crisis they were all needed for. And a crisis was just that, tiring...wearing. Through all that, though, she and Lorne had kept the little things. The small laughs, and quick lunches. And Fred realisied she'd been looking for big moments for her friends back then, something huge and warming to reassure their choice. Until some days she never saw them at all.

But now, even if they were seperate sometimes. Most of the time. Fred felt...it was going to be ok. For all of them. Each and everyone of them stood in bright contrast to the lonliness they'd all known months before. Years before. And it was hard a bit, to know she hadn't really been a part of those happenings, or at least there to see it, and record in somewhere, internally. But...it was better. And that made it worth it.

For the longest time latel, her mind had made it about the hotel, and what had been lost. But now, with Boston, Fred had finally been able to remind herself. About the wonder of the people who'd been in it. One of which, who'd be knocking on her door any minute. A door that lad to a still sad, undecorated apartment.


Lorne was going to tsk at her, but then he'd set it to rights. Not because she couldn't do it on her own, be because he'd want to help. But that's what friends did to spaces, helped make them go away. Especially....them.

Fred waited with a smile.