*****

"Bound with heavy paperboard backing for support and safekeeping."
-The front of a sketchpad.

Numbers... have a lot of meaning...

For example, I could tell you that the number of sketchpads my ex-girlfriend went through in a year was thirty-four, exactly. She locked them all up in a closet, with both padlock and knob lock, not letting anyone know about them. She always paid cash, bought them with sunglasses and a hat on, two towns over in a small out of the way art supply store.

Like they were drugs or something. But she told me about them. It was almost amusing to see her humiliation, her pink cheeks.

Almost.

She gave a part of herself to me, one she didn't share with anyone because it was nerdy. It was lame. I figured she told me because I'm a loser, too.

I was wrong.

After all that, after she went away, parts of me left. But I still found powers in numbers. When Oz-Wolf escaped and killed Willow, he left seven distinct bite marks. Lucky seven? Naw... I guess he just wasn't that hungry.

And his room number in that place of the white walls is 1313. Need I say more?

I've always been kind of absent minded... placing a number on something seems to catagorize it for me, make it more remembered. I remember every birthday party I had, because of my age. I remember the twelve times I managed to dunk Jesse in the pool when we went to summer camp when I was eight.

But the number that sticks out in my mind is one everyone seems to know, for obvious Beavis and Butthead inspired reasons.

69.

And NO, I don't recall it because of *that*.

No one ever seems to believe that Alexander Harris thinks about anything but sex.

I remember that number because it was on the G-Man's 69'th birthday that he first kissed me. On his 69'th birthday he told me he loved me.

Only took him thirty damn years.

~end~