Disclaimer: Characters ain't mine. They belong to Joss Whedon and other people who... well, who aren't me. Darn.
Rating: PG? (There may, or may not be, kissing involved :-o )
Time frame: Somewhere in season 4. Pre 'New Moon Rising' but post 'A New Man'/'The I In Team' br
Summery: Willow can't sleep. She's not sure why. Picking up a book, she opens it to find a lot more than she bargained for. Fluff!
Feedback: Love it. Good and bad. Good slightly more, obviously.
Note: Is my first Willow and Tara fanfic in a looooong time, so be gentle with me ;)
Note 2: Finally fixed the weird italics!
Switch
It was late. She knew that. Way too late to be walking across campus. Especially when you considered her lack of stake. It wasn't as if she hadn't been told a thousand times never to leave home without one, in Sunnydale a stake was like a umbrella. Be caught without one and you're in for a world of misery, messed hair and bloody endings. Okay, maybe not the best analogy, but stake equals important, and she knew that. In fact, she could put her hand on her heart and say that this had been the first time ever she had descended into the darkness of night without some form of protection.
She supposed that was because she had never been in this big of a spaz-fuelled hurry before.
She wasn't entirely sure what had caused the sudden attack of the crazies. She had been more or less okay lying in her darkened dorm room, staring at the ceiling. She couldn't now remember exactly what she'd been thinking about. Assignments, the week's big bad, how Buffy had chewed her ear off for an hour during class, ranting and raving about Riley. She liked Riley, she really did. She just didnt need to hear about him 24/7. But she knew how things went. New relationships often sparked a need to jabber on about every awesome aspect. A fleeting thought of whether or not relationships would remain new longer, if people didnt yap on about them as much had floated through her head briefly. She had then felt guilty about mentally bashing her best friend and resolved to be extra sweet and smiley to her the next day.
She was fairly certain she had then moved on to wondering what Xander saw in Anya, felt considerably less guilty, even allowed herself a self-indulging wicked half smile at such thoughts, before eventually realising she should probably stop. It was kind of mean of her, even if Anya had the finesse and tact of an un-potty trained puppy. Without the cuteness puppies usually bring.
It was chilly. She was only now grasping that, three quarters of the way across campus, after her dead run had dwindled and the adrenalin had waned slightly. She glanced up at the sky as she walked, momentarily distracted by how bright the stars looked in the cool crisp night time. The moon bathed everything around her in an eerie luminescent glow.
"I wonder if things would still look this creepy if I were somewhere other than Sunnydale. Seems like this place could make a Teddy Bears' Picnic scary."
A sudden image of a sleuth of teddy bears standing of their own free will, faces transformed into evil, bloodthirsty grimaces intent only on ripping every living thing in their vicinity to pieces stomped through her mind.
"Oh, bad! Bad, scary visual. Think happy thoughts." She shook the thought off with a shake of her shoulders and set her mind to trying to remember the ones that had propelled her from her room at such an ungodly hour.
At some point, she had rolled over to glance at the blinking red numbers of her alarm clock. She didn't know what the time had been, only remembered that she had uttered a groan of frustration at not being asleep yet. Her gaze had then fallen on a stack of books sitting on her bedside table. Ever the enthusiastic scholar, she had been studying them that evening, though her mind had been wondering even then. Flitting about in all kinds of directions, making it more and more difficult to concentrate.
Tossing the covers back over her legs, she had moved into a sitting position and reached towards the stack of books, pulling one free. She flicked on the lamp close to her and opened it to a random page. At first the words were blurred and ran together, but after a moment her eyes adjusted to the sudden intrusion of light and she began to read.
It was a spell book.
A sudden gust of wind swept up around her, teasing and pulling at her like kids in a playground. Tousling her hair and ruffling her clothes before floating into the trees, to aid the leaves in their ominous dance. She took a moment to stop and smooth out her appearance, aware of how fast her startled heart was beating. She let out a short laugh and shook her head at her silliness. Everything she'd been through, and the wind was frightening her. She glanced up at the building looming before her and began walking again.
The page she had landed on was occupied by a spell she had actually tried to attempt the week before. It had required the caster to surround themselves with orchid petals and various gem stones and then put themselves into a kind of trance. The outcome was supposed to involve pretty colours and floating objects, but she had never manage to reach it. Whether lack of skill had been the problem or lack of concentration, she didn't know. However, it had worked a few days later when she had had help.
It had become a steadfast habit. Every other day or so they would meet up to go over spells and hang out. She had found it increasingly easier to talk about nothing for hours. She smiled more when she was with her. She had noticed that early on, but hadn't really thought much of it. Or hadn't wanted to at the time, but it was there, and she couldn't deny it forever. Nor could she deny how her heart pounded every time she made her way along the now familiar hallway. Or how her head spun whenever the other woman smiled at her. How her palms would sweat every time a spell would call for them to clasp hands. She hadn't really thought about any of those things. Until that moment.
And that was it. The pinnacle on which her sanity had teetered. The moment where she had gone from thinking semi-clearly to an explosion of thoughts and feelings that barraged her in such a flurry, it must have flicked her 'think sensible, not crazy' switch to the off position in the scuffle. Suddenly she was filled with thoughts and scenarios that had up until then buried themselves in the deepest areas of her brain, rearing their heads in dreams she had only half remembered the next morning. Her breathing had suddenly become laboured, her hands had begun to moisten and the room had started to spin. She had closed her eyes. Which had most definitely not helped. Images of hands touching bare skin, two pairs of lips meeting tentatively at first, then being crushed together passionately, before breaking apart only to gasp and groan in pleasure.
The steel of the door handle was cold as she grabbed it. Her movements stalled for a moment as she enjoyed the feeling against her suddenly flushed skin.
"You should stop and think about this." She knew she should.
The door seemed unusually heavy as she heaved it open. Her footsteps echoed loudly in her ears. As she passed a small sitting area set into an alcove of the hallway, she caught the eye of a young man sat in front of a laptop, steaming cup of coffee set on the table to his right. He gave her an explanatory sleepy smile, which she returned with a knowing one of her own before she strode on.
"Looks like the evil of the Hellmouth comes in second place to school work tonight."
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stared at them.
"Really, stopping and thinking, probably of the good. This? This walking blindly into a situation that is completely foreign to you, while you're obviously not thinking clearly is very, very much of the bad."
Her brow creased in a frown as her internal monologue tried to convince her to think sensibly, but it was as though all its advice was being filtered through one of those silly straws. By the time it had weaved its way through the hot pink twists and coils, it had turned into something totally different and considerably more fun-filled.
After a minute or so, she had felt recovered enough to stand and had tossed the spell book aside, grabbing the jacket she had draped over the back of her desk chair and throwing it on. She'd slipped her feet into a pair of tennis shoes and left her room in a blur of motion.
And so she found herself walking slowly through a hallway. Eyes fixed onto a door near the end of it. If she had been aware of anything at that moment, she may have noticed if felt as though something inside her brain was trying desperately to press that defunct switch into the 'on' position. Almost getting it, but the strain proving to be too much in the end. Instead, everything moved past her as though it were an illusion. Melty. She wondered briefly if she were dreaming, but all of her remaining brain functions screeched to a halt when she found herself nearing the door she had been watching so ardently.
She stopped.
And knocked.
And reality bled back in at an alarming speed.
"What in the name of all things Earthy am I doing?"
Too late.
She held her breath as she heard quiet movements inside. The few seconds that ticked by seemed to last an age. Finally, the door cracked open, a gold chain swinging down into the gap, allowing it to open only so far.
Sleepy, dishevelled-hair-framed blue eyes blinked out at her.
"W-Willow?" Caught off guard, she stumbled over the name. Something she hadn't done in forever. She was usually at ease when she said it. Now, seeing the redhead at her door at such an hour, she instantly feared the worst. She closed the door a little, slid the chain out of its holder and opened obstructing barrier more fully.
"Hi, Tara." Willow breathed bashfully, flashing a small half-smile. Suddenly recognising the look in Tara's eyes, she mentally berated herself. "Everything's fine. Um…." She sighed heavily and shook her head. "I'm really sorry. I know it's super late and I shouldn't have come and you were sleeping, and I woke you up and that was really insensitive of me because I should know as well as anyone that studying gals need their sleep to function properly 'cause, college life? Kinda crazy with the workloads, but I knew what it was going to be like, because everyone I asked for advice told me how difficult it was going to be taking all the courses I wanted to, but I thought I could handle it and I'm babbling." She broke off and glanced up at Tara through her eyelashes. The blonde was leaning against the side of the door, a sleepy smile on her face, and Willow's insides suddenly gave a lurch.
"Oh dear."
She swallowed hard.
"I just, um, I don't even know how I ended up here" Liar "I was, I was reading and…." Another hard swallow as she tried to force her distracting thoughts away. "I just need-" She stopped herself. "I wanted to see you." Tara frowned again, though it was an easier, more playful one than before and this time accompanied by a wide smile.
"At 2am?" Willow closed her eyes and rolled her head back guiltily, her hair bouncing down around her face as it lolled forward again to face Tara. The blonde couldn't help but chuckle slightly at the look of utter sheepishness on her friend's face.
"I'm sorry." She squeaked. Tara just shook her head and opened the door wide, silently inviting the other woman in. Willow ducked her head as she entered the room and was enshrouded in darkness as Tara closed the door behind her. After a second or two, Tara flicked the switch that operated a string of the many sets of fairy lights and it bathed the room in a soft glow. Willow took a moment to let herself be enveloped in the feeling she often succumbed to when she was in Tara's room. Safe, happy, warm. She felt the blonde move seconds before a gentle hand laid itself on her shoulder. Tingly. Tingly was a new feeling. New, but she had decided in that moment that it was very good and definitely overpowered the others.
"Are y-you okay?" Tara asked, quietly. She turned to face the blonde, who dropped her hand, leaving the skin beneath Willow's clothes searing, aching, and almost reaching out to bring the hand back. She was startled by their sudden close proximity. Tara had been standing closer than she had anticipated, and her heart surged to her throat. She felt as though if she concentrated hard enough, she'd be able to feel every inch of the taller woman, even though they weren't touching. She couldn't recall another time she had ever been that hyper aware of anything.
"I'm fine." Willow answered, shakily. "Oh come on. That didn't even sound convincing to me." Sure enough, Tara eyed her sceptically and pointedly glanced towards the sun-shaped clock that hung on her wall. Willow stuck out her tongue and playfully poked the blonde in the arm, feeling her stomach twitch slightly at the contact. "I know, it's late. I said I was sorry."
"You don't need to apologise. I just w-want to know if there's something wr-wrong. Looks like you left in a hurry." Willow looked down at herself. She hadn't remembered leaving in her pyjamas. She sighed, kicking her feet out to make her pyjama bottoms flap around goofily, and shook her head.
"There's nothing wrong. Promise." Tara nodded her head, accepting the answer. She walked the few steps to her now messy bed and sat down. As if suddenly becoming aware of how she must look, her hands shot up to her hair and tried desperately to smooth it out. Willow giggled and took a step forwards, reaching out with no intention of touching, instead flapping the air in the direction of the hand Tara was using for smoothing. "Your hair looks fine." "Cute, adorable, sexy." She blinked hard. "Not many people can pull of the bed-head look, but you definitely don't have that problem." "Ha. Made you slip." Tara smiled shyly up at her and dropped her hand.
"So, w-what was so important it couldn't wait until daylight?" And that, Willow found, had her stumped. Because she could think of nothing but the truth. She clasped her hands together and stared at them. Apparently something had succeeding in flicking the switch back into the 'on' position, because now she knew she was being idiotic, but still couldn't think properly. A serious problem, considering what she was faced with.
"What am I going to tell her? That I had a revelation while looking at a spell book which proceeded to conjure up some seriously naughty, gay-type visuals?"
No, that wouldn't do. She'd probably scary the poor girl off. What had she been thinking?
"Willow?" Her attention was brought back to the face she had spent far longer than she realised thinking about.
"That you really, really wanted to kiss her."
An image of hands cupping cheeks and tangling in hair, while lips met heatedly over and over again came and went before she had time to block it out.
"I couldn't sleep."
"So you decided to walk all the way down here just to say hi?" Tara asked, a confused lop-sided smile settling into place. "Not that I'm c-complaing, but you could have called instead."
Red hair was tossed to one side in a desperate effort to get it out of the way as lips descended down to a pale, silky smooth neck, where they placed uncountable kisses, growing bold enough to include quick, slow licks, until they were pulled back slightly over teeth that nipped and bit. She heard her name moaned and was lost.
The switch was flicked once more. This time irrevocably.
"Calling wouldn't have…. I needed to see you." Tara didn't say anything. She just smiled a smile that was somewhere between happy and confused. She loved that Willow had needed to see her, but wasn't sure why or what that meant. The redhead unconsciously shuffled her foot against the carpet beneath her feet. There were so many things she suddenly wanted to say. It felt as though she'd been supposed to say them forever, but the words had suddenly been dumped in her lap for her to sort out and construct sentences out of. She didn't even know where to begin.
"What if I say something that totally wigs her out?" There was that niggling thought at the back of her mind. She didn't know whether or not to ignore it, so it was kind of just floating there for the time being. "I think I need to say stuff before I explode." She reasoned, silently. "If Tara's the person I think she is, I'm not gonna lose her because…. Because what? What exactly do you want to say here?" She didn't know.
Tara sat quietly and watched her friend as she obviously went through some kind of internal monologue. If there was one time in her life that she wished she could read minds, this was it. While the redhead was distracted, she let her eyes wander a little. She was wearing cow print pyjamas and a jacket Tara had seen her in on previous occasions. Her hair was slightly mussed and Tara wasn't sure if Willow had ever seemed more adorable to her. She wondered if the other woman knew that she pouted slightly when she concentrated. Or that her tongue poked out between her teeth when she smiled. She wondered if Willow knew how her eyes sparkled in the sunlight, changing between hazel and green and every shade in between, or how incredible she made cow print look.
Willow snapped out of her reverie when she heard Tara emit a quiet, almost undetectable sigh. In the split second it took the blonde to realise she'd been heard, Willow was able to notice that she was being stared at. Blue eyes shifted and met the redhead's gaze.
"Hmm, green today." Was Tara's fleeting thought.
Willow caught a hint of lingering longing in the eyes that met hers and it was as if the words that had been tossed into possession unexpectedly rearranged themselves.
"I couldn't sleep. I've been having trouble shutting my brain off lately and I couldn't put my finger on why. Then I picked up a spell book we used the other week. The one that had the pretty colours spell in it?" Tara nodded in silent acknowledgment, never taking her eyes from the shimmering pools of green before her. "So, I opened the book and…. that was the spell it opened on. I thought it was a kind of funny coincidence. And then I started thinking about how we've been spending a lot of time together lately." She paused. "I feel like I could talk to you until time ran out, you know?" Tara only just about managed a nod that time. "I like that. I really like that." Willow took a step closer to the bed the blonde sat on, forcing Tara to tilt her head back slightly to retain eye contact. "I started to think about how much I smile when I'm with you and that I catch myself trying to make you laugh whenever I can." Willow herself was smiling now. "And then…." She sighed, her shoulders heaving with the force of it. "Then I couldn't stop thinking about how incredibly pretty your eyes are, and that your smile makes me go weak at the knees, and I thought you might not know that. So I wanted to tell you, to make sure you did."
And there it was. The reason she had fled her room in the middle of the night in a spaz-fuelled haze. The reason she had left without the protection of a trusty stake. The reason she found herself drifting into day dreams during class more and more frequently. It all came down to one thing. Tara.
She was surprised it had taken her this long to fully realise how she felt. Feeling it course through her veins at that moment, it was the most wonderful, obvious thing in the world.
"W-Willow, I-"
"You don't have to say anything, Tara. I just…. I wanted you to know. How I feel. I think it's good to know. Up until tonight, I had no clue, and I feel like this…. This giant weight has been lifted off of me. Like when you see someone in a movie that you know you recognise, but you have no idea where you know them from and then finally, you're sitting in front of the TV and bam, there they are and you suddenly feel so much bett-"
"Willow."
"Yeah?"
"You're babbling." Red hair bounced slightly as she nodded.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I told you, you don't-" Willow took a final step and knelt down in front of the blonde, putting a finger to her lips. Tara eyes grew wide for a moment, but she went with it and stayed quiet.
"I'm not sorry for babbling." A slightly sad smile pulled at her lips as Tara's eyebrows rose questioningly, total confusion in her eyes. "I'm sorry because I'm seriously thinking about kissing you and I don't think I'm going to be able to stop myself." And she moved her hand down to rest on her own bent knees, pushed herself up slightly on them and touched her lips to Tara's.
Time slid to a smooth stop around them. The room melted away until there was only two and the heat and electricity that flowed between their bodies. For Willow, it started at her lips and flowed down and out, encasing every inch of her from her head to her toes. Tingly had nothing on this.
It was at that point she knew it was worth it. Even if Tara never wanted to speak to her again, she had known what it was like to kiss her, and she didn't think she would trade that for anything.
The moment Willow had spoken her last words, Tara had frozen.
"She's going to what?"
And then Willow was kissing her and it was as if her brain couldn't catch up to what was happening in time to process it. She felt the jolt of energy and warmth flow into her when Willow pressed her lips to hers, would remember later how everything had fallen into place, but for the moment the kiss was over before she had chance to even realise it had begun. Willow had broken away and was standing. She looked at Tara for a moment and then seemed to make her way to the door in slow motion. Time reset itself in the blonde's brain and she suddenly realised what had happened and what was going to happen if she didn't say or do something. In one sweeping, panic filled movement, she pushed herself off of the bed and made a grab for Willow's arm. She connected and clamped down, pulling the redhead around to face her. Their eyes met again, and this time something passed between them that had never been able to before.
"Don't be." And Tara, in perhaps the moment that would go down in history as her least shy one, stepped so close to Willow there was less than a millimetre separating them, slid the hand that had gripped her arm to her neck and brought their lips together. Willow whimpered at the unexpected contact, but moved into it nonetheless. Their eyes fluttered closed simultaneously, as they both took a second to imprint the connection in their memory banks. Willow's hands found their resting place on Tara's hips at the same moment the blonde's hand slid from her neck into her hair, and her other returned to its earlier position on Willow's shoulder. The first touch of Tara's tongue against the redhead's lips, made her shiver and melt at the same time. She doubted she would have had the willpower to deny the blonde access, even if she had wanted to, and so she let her in.
Tara would forever remember that, for whatever reason, Willow tasted of cinnamon that night. She would wonder how long they stayed like that, standing in the middle of the room, locked in a passionate embrace. Communicating their new, now fully understood need for each other only through their kisses and gentle caresses. Willow would not be able to tell her how much time had passed. All she would be able to say was that it was as though a switch had been flicked that night, finally opening her eyes to what was right in front of her. And she was very glad it had been.