Fairfax has an unusual civic claim on this occasion: every February, Old Town Fairfax closes its centre to hold a Chocolate Lovers Festival, and for one weekend a town better known for its courthouse and its commuter traffic turns into the least cynical place in Northern Virginia. That is the right frame for romance orders here, because Fairfax romance is not glamorous and does not pretend to be. It is a Thursday, and one of you is coming off the Orange Line at Vienna/Fairfax-GMU after a long day downtown, and the other one has arranged for something to be on the kitchen table when the door opens. The deliveries split into four kinds. Home drops are the bulk of it and the easiest run on this grid: Old Town Fairfax, Mosby Woods and Country Club Hills in 22030, Fairfax Circle and Mantua in 22031, the Braddock Road neighbourhoods of 22032, Penderbrook and Fair Lakes in 22033, then Oakton, Fairfax Station, Burke, Annandale and Vienna — covered porches, driveways, side doors. Apartment and condo drops behave differently and need a front desk or leasing office rather than a doorstep, which is the pattern for the buildings around Merrifield and the Mosaic District, along the Metro corridor at Dunn Loring and Vienna, in Fairfax Corner and around Fair Lakes, and in the student-heavy blocks near George Mason's Fairfax campus at 4400 University Drive, where residence halls receive at a package desk and the recipient comes down for the delivery. Hotel drops go north to the Tysons and McLean cluster — the Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, the Hyatt Regency at Tysons Corner Center, the Archer Hotel on Tysons Boulevard, the Hilton McLean on Jones Branch Drive and the Westin Tysons Corner — or west to the Hyatt Regency at Reston Town Center and the Hilton at Washington Dulles, and they always need a phone call to the hotel first, because no front desk sends a stranger up to a floor. Date-night table drops are a coordination problem rather than a floral one, and the restaurant is the one to ask: the Main Street and University Drive row in Old Town, Coastal Flats and Ozzie's Good Eats at Fairfax Corner, Artie's on Old Lee Highway, the Mosaic District block in Merrifield, Church Street and Maple Avenue in Vienna, Clyde's at Tysons, and L'Auberge Chez François on Springvale Road in Great Falls for the nights that are a genuine occasion.