tea v coffee

Xander: "Here's your coffee, brewed from the finest Columbian lighter fluid."
Giles: "Thank you. Horrible."
Xander: "Aren't you supposed to be drinking tea, anyway?"
Giles: "Tea is soothing. I wish to be tense."
Xander: "OK. But you're destroying a perfectly good cultural stereotype here."

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S orders up the closest thing they have to a bucket of coffee. i order earl grey. J orders tea. we're trying to be soothed, we need to be soothed, but we are all tense.

they spent the night at the hospital last night, N had a bad night. they've had a few hours nap and gone back, now we're having mid-morning sustenance while C does the vigil. it's rather surreal now, there's nothing much to be said, we're all just sitting around waiting for someone to die.

so we hug and they go back and i go home, give my parents a hand with some jobs, we have dinner. all normal, just slightly removed. then a text when we're watching tv later on: N died just after 8pm, finally away from the pain. am sort of empty now; there's a space where there shouldn't be.