TITLE: Hacker Confidential

AUTHOR: Laragh

RATING: PG-13 (Certian chapters will be NC-17, be warned!)

DISCLAIMER: Willow, Tara and any other characters from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise belong to Joss Whedon, FOX, ME and a whole host of other entities, none of which are me.

SUMMARY: Willow and Tara are in love, but some changes are coming in their lives...

SPOILERS: AU fic, so at most minor references or pieces of dialogue

FEEDBACK: Yes please

GREAT BIG HONKIN' NOTE ADDED FEB '13

I've recently gone back and edited most of my fics to change Tara to what I believe is her rightful brunette. This took a long time, and none were anywhere near as long as this series. There were almost 1200 'blondes' I would have had to manually change. Therefore, she remains blonde here. I plan on changing that in-series at a later date and hope it doesn't annoy anyone too much.

Willow Rosenberg tapped at the buttons on her keyboard, inputting the serial codes to access the server of the local power station and chuckled to herself when she gained entrance with little effort.

"Their security system is for shit," she muttered to herself and typed in the co-ordinates of the local Department of Children and Families branch, giggling as she turned their lights on and off a few times in quick succession.

She briefly thought that any other mature twenty-four year old wouldn't spend their days amusing themselves by messing with random buildings and their light supply, before navigating over to her email and sighing when she saw no new responses to the many job applications she had sent off to various establishments.

Have no choice but to make my own fun when I can't get a damn job.

Despite going to college and graduating with honours, she had found it extremely difficult to find a job, or even figure out what she wanted to do, and was at the stage where she was willing to work just about anywhere.

Well, almost anywhere.

Deciding to stop dwelling on her lack of employment for the moment, she glanced at her watch and paled as she saw the time.

5pm. Shit. How long have I been browsing the web? Okay I got half an hour to pull this off, get to it Rosenberg!

She stood up from her seat and walked the few feet from the main room of the small apartment she had lived in for the last two years, in the Fenway neighbourhood of Boston, which encompassed the open-plan living room/dining area/kitchen as well as an en-suite bedroom. She walked into the bedroom and opened the drawer of her nightstand.

She ran her fingers along the two small boxes placed in there and pulled out the small packet that was alongside it, opening it up, before taking the contents out and standing on the bed, arranging them the way she wanted on the ceiling.

When she was satisfied, she giggled to herself in excitement and jumped off the bed, running into the kitchen to make a start on dinner. Twenty minutes later she was just about to add some pepper to the pasta sauce she had made when the front door of the apartment swung open, a tired-looking blonde walking in, dropping her handbag on the floor unceremoniously. Willow ran over and wrapped her arms around the other woman's neck and quickly crushed their lips together.

Tara Maclay responded instantly when she felt soft lips on her own and cupped the back of Willow's head, bringing their mouths closer together.

"Yo ladies, want some real action?"

Willow pulled away with a menacing scowl and slammed the door on the guy who had apparently been watching them kiss.

"Can we move? I don't know how we can live in the same building as that stupid perve. Every time he sees us he makes some stupid comment about threesomes or…" she trailed off as she saw the tired look on the blonde's face, "And you're exhausted and don't care about our stupid neighbour. Okay, you go sit, I shall bring you wine and food."

"Really?" Tara asked, a small smile on her face, "That'd be wonderful. I had the worst day. Thank god it's Friday."

"Yep," Willow nodded, "And if you're really lucky, there might even be a foot rub in your future."

Tara walked over to the sofa and collapsed onto it.

"You are the best girlfriend in the world."

Willow grinned to herself and went back into the kitchen, finishing her sauce and serving the pasta into two bowls, and bringing them over to the small table they had set up near the front door. She added a couple of glasses and a bottle of red wine before glancing at Tara and seeing her eyes closed. She quietly walked over and bent down on her knees, brushing some of the blonde's hair off her brow, before placing a gentle kiss on her lips. Tara stirred and fluttered her eyes open.

"Food's ready," Willow whispered, "You wanna eat on the couch?"

"No," Tara replied, shaking her head, "You made dinner. We'll eat at the table."

They both stood up, Tara stretching her arms over her head for a second before sitting in front of the steaming bowl of pasta.

"This smells great," she said, picking up her fork, "How was your day?"

Willow took a long sip of wine before answering.

"Same as ever for your continuously-unemployed girlfriend. I woke up. I watched Oprah – did you know there's a company that can map out your entire genome if you just send them some of your spit? Very cool. Anyway, then I messed around on the net for a while and made dinner."

Tara put her hands over one the redhead's, giving her a small smile.

"You'll get a job, sweetie. Just don't lose hope."

"We've been outta college two years," Willow sighed, "Two years and I can't even keep a job at Starbucks."

Tara winced as she thought back to her girlfriend's brief foray into being a barista, a year and a half ago. It had lasted all of two weeks, culminating in the redhead being fired; a bad mood along with the busy, impatient customers of Boston overwhelming her, causing her to 'accidentally' spill a tall macchiato with a shot of vanilla syrup all over a particularly rude business woman who kept berating her to hurry up.

"Will, you're the smartest person I know, you've got a degree in psychology and you're better with a computer than most of the IT guys at work. You've got machines and the human mind all worked out. That's like unlimited possibilities. You've just got to stick it out."

"Yea. Yea I guess. Jeez, I don't know what I'd do without you. I would've succumbed to my self-despair, lied and told my parents I wasn't as fabulously gay as I am and moved back in with them. And I do not want to go back to California," Willow replied with a small smile.

"Well lucky you do have me then."

Willow turned her hand over in the blonde's and squeezed as she ate her food.

"What about you? You said you had a rough day?"

"Oh yea," Tara said, preparing to launch into the story of her day.

She worked as a Social Worker for the Department of Children and Families, having been employed right after both her and Willow graduated from Boston University. She loved her job and knew she was lucky to have one, especially with her and Willow relying on just her income to get by at the moment, but some days were worse than others.

"Remember I told you about that little boy?"

"The kid being abused by his dad?" Willow asked, remembering Tara talking about him the week before.

"Well, yea, but we can't prove it. All his injuries point to abuse, his story is word-for-word the same as his dad's, which is suspicious enough, but any time I go to see him, he just clams up and won't say a word. The poor kid is terrified. Anyway, I was with him again today and his arm is broken. Again. And, like all the others, it's a defensive wound. I just don't know what to do."

"You do what you told me earlier. Stick it out and don't lose hope."

"It's just hard, I know he's being hurt and I can't do anything."

Willow just squeezed the blonde's hand in comfort, unsure of what to say. She knew her girlfriend felt each case she got assigned to personally, she always figured it was because of her own past, her abusive father and how no one had helped her until she got a scholarship to BU and left his clutches. Even though Willow knew that Tara caring so much made her a wonderful social worker, she hated that she had to take on more pain, when all she wanted to give her was happiness. She was pulled from her thoughts as Tara continued speaking.

"Anyway, apart from that, my boss was on my case about all this paperwork I have due. I mean, I have another week to sort it and it's almost all done anyway but he just keeps yelling about it. Oh and there was this weird thing in the whole building as well, the lights kept going on and off for like two minutes and people were freaking out, it's amazing the amount of scaredy-cats I work with-" Tara narrowed her eyes as she saw an odd look cross the redhead's features, "What is it? Why do you look guilty? What did you – oh my god, that was you, wasn't it? The lights?!"

"Just my way of saying hello," Willow replied sheepishly.

Tara tried to be mad but she couldn't resist the adorable pout on her girlfriend's face.

"Just be careful."

"I will, I will," Willow reassured, before changing the topic of conversation and playing footsie with the blonde under the table.

A few hours later, which included Tara's foot rub and a playful water fight when they were doing the dishes, Tara walked into the bedroom in pyjama bottoms and a tank top and grabbed a bottle of lotion from the dresser, squirting some into her hands and up and down her arms. She glanced at the redhead, who was sitting up in bed, jumping up and down slightly.

"What's with you tonight? You've been excited all evening?"

"A beautiful blonde is about to get into bed with me," Willow replied with a nervous grin, "What's not to be excited about?"

Tara rolled her eyes and put the lotion back before slipping under the covers and resting her head on the pillow. She watched Willow stay in her seated position, her eyes darting everywhere.

"Something on your mind?" she asked, reaching one hand up and turning Willow's face towards her.

"I wrote you a poem," Willow blurted out, then blushed, "But it's not very good."

Tara looked surprised, but had a wide smile on her face.

"Well, read it to me!"

Willow opened the drawer to her nightstand again, discreetly putting the small box beside her and a piece of paper from under it. She took a deep breath and turned to Tara.

"More than four years it's been,
Since I met you that day,
I looked into your eyes,
And had no idea what to say."

She saw Tara smiling, probably remembering the day they had met all those years ago. The smile encouraged her and she continued.

"Your beauty was astounding,
Your smile lit up the room,
You made my heart pound,
Boom-boom, boom-boom."

Tara giggled and sat up more in the bed, putting one hand on the redhead's knee, though the blanket.

"I wrote this silly little poem
'Cause I'm hoping you'll agree,
Tara Maclay-"

Willow used her spare hand to turn off her lamp, plunging the room into darkness, which caused the glow-in-the-dark stars she had arranged earlier to spell out her words as she spoke them.

"Will you marry me?"