"I don't see why we couldn't have just ordered room service." Willow complained. Tara couldn't help but smile at the exaggerated way that Willow stuck out her lower lip as she pouted. "The bed was comfy." Somehow, Tara didn't think the comfyness of the bed was really Willow's biggest priority, though it really was a comfortable bed.
Tara reached over and took Willow's hand. She'd always been tactile with the woman she loved, but she'd found herself even more so since she'd come back… come back from the dead. After over two years with no body, unable to touch anything or anyone, let alone Willow, Tara felt like she had to check often, to make sure she still could.
"Willow, I was dead for over two years. I missed a lot of things – you most of all." Tara traced her thumb along the back of Willow's hand. She watched her girlfriend look down a moment, and the Tara went on. "But I also missed pancakes. A lot." She'd missed all kinds of food, really, but pancakes, being her favorite, were the ones she'd missed most of all. "And the pancakes we ordered from room service weren't exactly that good." They hadn't beenhorrible, but still.
Some of the food they'd ordered via room service the last three days since they'd arrived at this resort had been tasty – especially the whipped cream and chocolate syrup.
Unintentionally, Tara felt heat rising in her cheeks as that thought came to her mind. Closing her eyes for a moment, Tara clamped down on that errant memory. Simply having her girlfriend, the woman she loved, right here, so close to her, was more than enough to be distracting. She didn't need… pleasant memories making things more so.
"Well, okay, I'll give you that." Willow said, still sort of pouting. "But you're really picking pancakes over spending more time in bed cuddling with me? That doesn't sound very fair." The redhead's tone and the exaggerated nature of her pout put the lie to any notion of actually being upset.
"Willow, I don't think cuddling is really what you have in mind." Tara pointed out, lowering her voice a moment, and to her delight, Willow flushed red for a moment at her words. Willow looked so cute when she blushed.
She looks cute and beautiful all the time though. Okay, yes, that was true, but she looked – extra-special cute when she was blushing. So there. Tara mentally stuck her tongue out at the little voice in her head that had felt the need to nitpick her.
"I do have cuddling in mind!" Willow defended herself, then bit her lip and added, more quietly, "just… not just cuddling."
"Proving my point," Tara observed. She took a sip from her water and looked down at the menu. They had a lot of different kinds of pancakes. She didn't know if Willow had picked this particular resort because there was a restaurant renowned for its pancakes as part of the location or not, but it was a nice bonus.
"Just how often are you going to have pancakes though? You've had them almost every day since you came back." Willow asked, more seriously, "I mean… you used to have them… two or three times a week… so that's two and a half times 52 weeks times two-" Willow started to go on, but Tara interrupted her. She didn't need the specific reminder of just how long she'd been dead. Of how long she'd been in heaven, watching everything. Unable to be with Willow. To comfort her, to spend any time with her, to really hearher voice, listen to her babble.
Yes, she'd kept a watch on what Willow was doing. She'd watched all the friends she'd left behind – Buffy, Xander, Dawn, Giles, even Spike, though Willow was the one she'd kept an eye on most of all.
Except that… when you didn't have a physical body… you didn't 'hear' or 'see' the same way. Tara had tried to explain it a few times, since she'd come back just over a month ago, but…
There was no way to put the concept in words. And the only way that Willow or anyone else could have the experience of it, to actually understand what she was talking about was to die. And that just wasn't going to happen. Not for decades to come.
"I'll have them as often as I can until I'm sick of them for a while." Tara said to interrupt Willow, biting her lip a little and casting her eyes down, still thinking about things she didn't want to think about. She didn't want to ruin the time they had now thinking about the time they'd lost.
Now it was Willow's turn to hold her hand lightly, then give it a small squeeze. In an attempt to lighten the mood, Willow added:
"Does that mean I need to be worried about you getting sick of me?" Again, her tone was teasing, unserious. And it did make Tara smile.
"Willow, if there's one thing you don't ever need to worry about, it's that." Tara said, her smiling only growing broader. "You paid for two months here, and I plan on making the most of those two months." Tara had been appalled at the amount of the council's money Willow had dropped for them to be here for two months, thinking it excessive, but Giles had signed off on the expenditure gladly. Apparently, Willow had saved the New Council more than that much by personally empowering the wards on the new headquarters in London and the other, outlying bases of operation.
And, in his words, they deserved all the time in the world. That said, he could only justify sparing them for two months. And if there was an emergency that needed them, Buffy and Faith and all the rest knew how to get a hold of them.
Tara had been surprised that Buffy was into women, when she first saw Buffy and Faith start things up a few months after Sunnydale. She'd never picked that up from Buffy, and she usually had pretty good gaydar.
But Faith was good for Buffy, and from what she could tell, Buffy was good for Faith - she didn't have much to compare against, but from what she'd heard about Faith over the years…
Tara returned her thoughts back to the now.
"I was hoping you'd say that." Willow said with a smile of her own. "I love you." Willow added, squeezing Tara's hand again - Tara squeezed back, but before they could say more, the waiter arrived at the table, asking for their order.
"I'll have the blueberry pancakes, large order. Just regular maple syrup - and can I have that on the side?" She asked. She wanted to pour the syrup on herself, get it just the way she wanted it. You had to do it just right - not too much, not too little, and poured on just the right places.
"Of course," The waiter replied, and he turned to Willow. "And for you?"
"I'll have the three egg-omelette, cheese, green peppers and sausage," Willow supplied the ingredients she wanted inside her omlette, "and whole wheat toast on the side."
"Of course. I'll have your food out as quickly as possible."
Tara looked at Willow once the Waiter left. "Three-egg omelette? Someone's hungry," she observed with a small smile.
"Says the person who just ordered six blueberry pancakes! And just look at the size of the pancakes they make here," Willow pointed to a nearby table, where someone was eating a pancake. It was quite large. Yum. "counting your syrup, I think you're having more food than me." Tara's smile expanded until she couldn't help but giggle a little.
"I guess we've both worked up an appetite," Tara agreed. "And it's all your fault." She stuck her tongue out at Willow as she said that.
"My fault? That's now how I remember last night going Missy!" Willow countered, wagging her finger in Tara's face - which only made Tara giggle again - and this time bring Willow down into the laughter alongside her.
It was amazing and surprising and wonderful that they'd been able to resume their relationship so well, despite her being dead. Things hadn't been perfect at first, in that first month. There was so much to talk about that they never had talked about before… never had the chance. And there was all that had happened to Willow in the intervening two years. All she'd done, had been through…
Tara wasn't sure if she'd have chosen to come back, to let the spell Illyria had cast for Willow if WIllow had still been dating Kennedy. She didn't… she didn't have much issue with Willow moving on. She was dead at the time, after all, and Kennedy had been decent for her, in that moment. But… if she had come back while Willow was still dating someone else…
Well, there were two likely outcomes. Tara would have either had to watch Willow not break up with whoever she was with, while she was right there in the physical world (It was one thing to watch from the remove of heaven). And Tara didn't even want to imagine how painful that could have been.
Or Willow would have just broken up with whoever she was with in favor of her. Which would have been… mean, and unfair. And made it look like Willow was just… rebounding or using whoever she was with. And Tara wouldn't have wanted to leave whoever Willow left brokenhearted or anything.
But… fortunately, that hadn't had to be a problem. They had had a lot to talk about, and they'd talked about it, worked through the problems. And so now here she was. Alive and more than ready to spend the rest of her life with the woman that she loved with all her heart.
"I love you," Tara suddenly felt the need to say. She squeezed Willow's hand, and then, without warning, leaned across the table to give Willow a quick kiss on the lips - if they hadn't been in the middle of a restaurant filled with people, Tara wouldn't have pulled back after only bare moments.
"I love you," Willow said back.
For two years and more, Tara had been dead. She'd been able to watch over Willow, watch over her friends. She'd been in heaven, yes… but she hadn't been happy. Not in the way she was now though.
Now… now she was happy. Because she had Willow once more. She could be with the woman she loved. That was what mattered, more than anything else.
She had Willow, and all was right with the world.