Gods Served and Abandoned
Hi Kittens! Here’s my next foray into fan fiction. Thanks again to all of you who gave such great support and feedback to "On Second Thought." That piece is now in the completed fics archive and it includes my final responses to all of you who were kind enough to write in and share your reactions with me. I hope you enjoy this story.
Disclaimers: I wouldn’t presume to imply that I own any of these characters. I take better care of what I love than that. Joss and ME will answer to their own gods in their own time.
Spoilers: Up to season 5.
Rating: R for now; if it changes, I’ll give heads-up.
Distribution: Sure, with acknowledgement.
Feedback: Even more sure! Bring it on!
*****
"Gods Served and Abandoned"
Part I
"Good birthday?"
"Best birthday."
"You know, I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me about your family…"
Had she been inclined to open her eyes, long moments later, Willow might have noticed that she and Tara were floating a good sixteen inches off of the ground. As it was, she only knew that Tara’s fingers were arcing tiny spirals across her back and that Tara’s hair was spilling lightly across her own cheek.
She also knew that sometime soon, after they left the Bronze but before this birthday celebration was over, she and Tara would make love. And for the first time, Willow now understood, Tara could offer herself up to Willow, and take Willow in return, safe in the knowledge that she need fear nothing from herself. There was no demon within her; and her family, far more realistic horrors, were now hours away.
Let me give you everything you deserve, Tara Maclay. Let me help you bury the demons of your last name.
*****
The arbitrarily-patched potholes of Route 132 offered an arrhythmic tempo to the silent drive back home. Nathan Maclay clutched the steering wheel as if trying to throttle something that offended him deeply, the whites of his knuckles visible even in the night. He had barely spoken since the three of them had left Sunnydale, even though Donnie had tried to incite his anger, baiting him almost, in an effort to get some kind of reaction from the man who had been so thoroughly emasculated earlier that evening. But his father had only grunted tersely a few times before finally snapping, "That’s enough, Donald. Hold your tongue." Cousin Beth, of course, simpered her agreement with Donnie, reiterating her tight-lipped pronouncement that Tara was an ungrateful, unnatural girl. But she had shrewdly reckoned Nathan Maclay’s admonishment to his son to include herself, and now sat primly with the air of reluctant smugness that characterizes the purest version of Christian piety.
*****
"Hey Baby—you still have three gifts to unwrap. This birthday ain’t over yet!" They were back in their room, and Willow was standing in front of Tara with a grin that encompassed roughly the same square footage as the Hollywood Bowl. She was bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet and somehow the word "pleased" seemed an insult to the degree of her satisfaction with the night thus far.
"Willow, honey, you’ve already done so much for me—the party, the tickets to Sarah MacLachlin, the truly remarkable cunnilingus…You didn’t need to do anything else." Despite Tara’s protestations, though, her eyes were shining.
"Tara, this is the first birthday I’ve shared with you. Do you know how wrong it is that you spent nineteen birthdays without me? Do you have any idea how much making up I have to do for all that lost time? I mean, even without the interest accrued on all those birthdays, I’m way behind." The remarkable thing, of course, was that this idea wasn’t an abstract one to her. She wasn’t just bantering.
"Case in point: 1993. You turn thirteen. You’re a teenager now, an absolutely life-altering event. And where am I? Am I sitting beside you at the table, watching you blow out your candles? Am I going through all sorts of Byzantine maneuvers to arrange the perfect surprise for you? Am I asking my parents’ permission to stay overnight with you in a thinly-veiled attempt to cop a feel even though we’re both just starting to recognize our sexuality? No, I am not. I’m in Sunnydale, sitting up in my room studying."
"Willow, sweetie, how can you know exactly what you were doing on November 7th, 1993?"
"Trust me, it’s the same thing I was doing every night except for the nights when I was vanquishing the forces of darkness, and that didn’t start until ’96."
"And your GPA didn’t drop a single percentage point, did it?" Tara smiled at her proudly.
My girlfriend’s biggest erogenous zone is the brain. It turns her on that I love to solve problems. She gets hot thinking about my mental prowess. God, how lucky am I?
"Well, my geek cachet isn’t the topic at hand, although I wouldn’t dream of violating your right to enjoy it. No, ma’am, we’re talking about your birthday and all the ways I plan to celebrate you over the next sixty years or so. I mean, God, Tara—this is the day that you were born! You came into the world and I had no idea you’d come onto the scene…although I wasn’t aware of much of anything at that time, I guess, besides eating and sleeping and pooping. But, back to the subject at hand, you were born and wrapped up in a little blanket and you had those adorable little ringlets and those incredible blue eyes and you spent your first night yawning and stretching and clenching your little fists…" Suddenly she felt the need to express herself in song. "On the day that you were born, the angels got together…"
"Oh God, Willow—you’re giving me the gift of Karen Carpenter. Just when I think I grasp the full extent of your love."
"Why do birds suddenly appear? It’s because, you are queer…"
"I don’t think I got that particular 45."
"Well, it was a limited edition… Anyway, all those birthdays came without either of us knowing about the other, not knowing that there was this other person out there who would just completely change our lives. And I guess I’m just so smitten with you that a part of me is jealous that I didn’t get to spend all the previous birthdays with you so I wanna carpe the birth diem like a woman possessed. If that’s OK with you," she added unnecessarily.
Tara’s smile turned a shade bittersweet. "You know, last year was the worst birthday I’d ever had. It was the first one without Mom, and the last one—or so I thought—before my demon side came out. I was here at college where I didn’t know many people, nobody that I was close to, nobody that I could talk to about any of it. I spent my birthday night in my room listening to Allison Krause and crying."
"Oh, Baby…I’m so sorry." Willow felt as if her own heart was breaking, imagining her beloved so lonely and so bereft.
"And then, a few months later, I drag myself to another Wicca meeting and I hear this beautiful redhead pipe up with the earth-shattering idea that the witch group do something witchy, and I just start falling and pretty soon I’m too busy waiting for her knock on my door to be that sad anymore. Now here I am, twenty years old, in love and loved. Who says good things don’t come to those who wait?"
"So you were waiting for me?" Willow couldn’t resist pulling for a little heart stroking from Tara.
"Oh yes, even though I didn’t know who you’d be. I just knew that I wouldn’t do what Dad kept wanting me to do: date one of the nice boys from back home."
"Eew, Tara—your dad was trying to fix you up?" The thought of her own parents being actively involved in her life was a stretch for her, and now she was seeing some of the better aspects of that incongruity.
" I think he didn’t really expect me to leave for school after Mom died. If I had decided to stick around Cold Springs and marry myself off to some local boy who could plug a deer at two hundred yards, I don’t think he would have argued."
"And Donnie?" Tara’s older brother was now a source of added disdain and anger for Willow. She knew what Tara’s reflexive shrinking in the Magic Box had meant earlier tonight, when the surly figure had started toward her threatening to beat her down. Tara had never said explicitly that Donnie had beaten her, but Willow had suspected it. Now she knew. Now she hated him.
Tara’s face grew somber. "I try not to think about what goes on in Donnie’s mind, to be honest. All I know is that he’s been mean and angry at life since I can remember."
Suddenly Willow wanted to change the subject. The image of any Maclay whose name wasn’t Tara was an unsettling one to her. They were gone, driving back to their prison without their captive, who had gone and gotten all self-confident on them. The nerve.
*****
It wasn’t right; he was dead sure about that.
They’d driven all the way up to that fancy college she went to (she was too good for any of the local schools, where she could have stayed at home), intending to pack her up and bring her back—and then she’d said she wasn’t coming back. Just like that. She didn’t want to come home. And Daddy had just stood there like some castrated bull-calf, letting a bunch of girls tell him what he could and couldn’t do with his own daughter.
It wasa bunch of girls, too, even though some of them pretended to be guys…That English faggot, cleaning his glasses and standing behind those two girls; and that other pretty boy, the one who’d threatened him when he started toward Tara—when he’d had the balls to do what their daddy apparently wouldn’t do, which was to remind Tara how things were in the Maclay family. But that guy had piped up all cocky-like and taken him by surprise. That’s why he’d stopped so dead in his tracks; he’d been caught off-guard. It wouldn’t have happened twice, though. He wished he’d had another chance before their daddy turned like a whipped dog, with his tail all tucked between his legs, and headed out of the shop. The only real man in that whole shop besides him was that other English guy with the greased-back hair and fancy leather jacket. He’d stepped up and smacked Tara, but all that had done was prove that Tara didn’t have any demon in her.
He’d suspected as much for awhile now. It just didn’t add up. But that didn’t mean that Tara had any right to speak that way to her family, and just turn her back like she was too good for any of them. If Daddy said she should pack up and come home, she should have done it. Instead, what happened? They were driving back to Cold Springs in the dead of night and Tara was still at her fancy-ass college. She was probably laughing at them right now, the little bitch.
It wasn’t right.
******
"This first one is…I hope it’s OK with you, sweetie." With a slight air of trepidation, Willow handed Tara an envelope. In it was a card which read, In honor of the remarkable woman who raised the remarkable woman I love, a donation has been made to the National Breast Cancer Foundation in your name.
As Willow watched, tears slid past Tara’s lids and trickled slowly down her face.
"Was that alright for me to do, Tara? I mean, I know I didn’t know her, not directly—"
"Willow, it’s the most wonderful thing you could have done, to honor my mother like that. I—I can’t tell you what it means to me that you even thought of such a thing. And knowing you, it doesn’t surprise me a bit." She said this last piece with a little smile.
"I’m so glad, Baby. I just wanted to do something to—to remember her; to thank her for you." Willow pulled Tara close to her and kissed her almost reverently.
"She would have loved you, you know."
*****
He’d guessed his mother wasn’t a demon, but that hadn’t made him love her any more. Not that he figured she cared or even noticed, she was always smiling at her little "Bright Eyes" and sharing secret jokes with her. Oh, she hugged him and told him she loved him, but he knew she kept some special store of love just for Tara, like the good silver that you take out for the company that matters. Not for him. Those two shared the magic; he knew they did, even though Daddy had told his wife never to practice it again. He knew his Momma had shared secrets with Tara that she would never tell him. He wasn’t special enough, or sweet enough, or whatever enough. He’d told himself he wouldn’t cry when she died and he was surprised at how easy it was to keep that promise.
*****
"OK, pick one: left or right?"
Tara was a little perplexed by the instructions, because Willow hadn’t extended two closed hands. She was pushing her chest forward, wriggling her shoulders back and forth.
"You mean I should pick either your left breast or your right breast?" Tara’s eyebrows were close to receding completely into her hairline with the extent of her bemusement.
"That’s my brilliant birthday girl! Your final two gifts await you, deep within the confines of my bra." Willow had never really imagined herself as a saucy wench before, but she was warming to the idea immensely.
"Yes! It’s Willow-breasts! I’ll take Doors Number One and Two, please!" So saying, Tara scooped up Willow around the waist and wrestled her back onto the bed, where she reached around to the back of Willow’s dress and began to unzip it. After considerable tumbling and wrestling and kiss-and-grin rolling about, the two had managed to get each other’s dresses off and were laying on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. Finally, Willow sat up and once more wriggled her breasts, hidden within her dark-green silk bra, in Tara’s face.
"Left or right, sweetie—what’ll it be?"
"Don’t rush me, don’t rush me…Lemme see if I can get any hints here." She reached out and slowly cupped Willow’s right breast in one hand, and then did the same to her left, massaging her through the soft fabric. Willow’s laughter stilled, and her gaze turned darker, but she still smiled with self-satisfaction. Tara could feel Willow’s nipples hardening under her fingers. She felt something else, too—tiny slips of paper, each folded over once or perhaps twice, tucked into each cup of Willow’s bra.
"I think I’ll try…the left one." With that, she slid the strap of silk down over Willow’s bare shoulder and then eased her fingers under the fabric, rolling the nipple quickly between her finger and thumb before sliding her fingers under the small, warm breast. She held Willow’s gaze while she retrieved the folded piece of paper, looking away finally to read its contents.
I’ve been studying a little bit about deep muscle massage. I’d like to show you what I’ve learned.
"Oh, sweetie—you’ve been reading about massage? So you could give me one?" Tara’s eyes lit up with child-like surprise. Willow looked at her with a fierce, almost aching protectiveness.
She’s still surprised that I love her as much as she loves me. Goddess, please help me make her see how completely right that is.
Aloud, she said, "I know how much your back and neck ache when you’ve been studying for a long time. I wanna help make it better."
"But to take the time to learn about it, Willow…You could’ve easily given me a certificate for a massage."
"Yeah, well, I also wasn’t crazy about the idea of somebody else putting their hands all over you. I mean, at the risk of sounding all cave-dyke, I wanna be the only person making you sigh when they touch you." She grinned, but it was true. "Now, m’lady—your last gift of the evening." With that, she squeezed her right breast, massaging the nipple to hardness as Tara watched and parted her lips with anticipation.
"I think I’ll try a different means of access this time," Tara murmured. She reached behind Willow and unsnapped her bra, holding the right strap loosely in her hand as she brought her mouth slowly down to Willow’s breast. She gently nuzzled the fabric back with her lips, pausing to take the nipple into her mouth and caress it fully between her tongue and teeth. Willow closed her eyes, pulling Tara’s mouth tighter against her. Finally, Tara released her nipple and slid the strap lower down her shoulder until she could take the slip of paper between her lips.
"And what have we here?" she asked softly.
You have a gift certificate waiting for you at Sappho’s Samplings. I’ll be more than happy to help you with your selections.
"Sweetie, is this a lesbian bookstore? I’ve never heard of it, but it sounds wonderful!"
Willow paused briefly. "It’s not exactly a bookstore, Baby. It specializes in more…applied aspects of lesbian life." She adopted what she hoped was a very salacious leer.
Tara stared at her in confusion for a moment, before her features cleared with the force of a sandblasting and her eyebrows shot skyward as if catapulted. "Oh my God, Willow…Are you saying—is this a sex shop?"
"I think they prefer the term ‘Merchants of Pleasure,’ but yeah, you have the right idea." Willow had never known that gift giving could have such wonderful payoffs—and this was before they had even gone to the shop.
"I thought we could just browse a little bit; you know, be informed consumers. And then when you knew what you most wanted, we could make our final selections." As Tara continued to gape at her, Willow grew slightly concerned. She knew that her lover was no prude, but maybe this had been a little too saucy. "Tara, is this OK? Have I offended you, or made you uncomfortable?"
Finally, Tara gave a shaky laugh. "Oh, no, sweetie…I’m just wondering if I’ll come in my pants right now thinking about going into that shop with you."
Smiling with immense relief, Willow leaned forward and kissed Tara’s hand. "No, sweet birthday girl, don’t do that. Don’t keep all those wonderful spasms and groans and tastes to yourself. Share them with me, OK? Share the wealth, oh Wondrous Hot Mama Most Divine."
And Tara, because she was by nature such an incredibly giving person, did just that. It was approximately three hours later that they finally used their bed for sleeping.
*****
At about that same time, Donnie was settling into his bed with the same surly look slashed across his face.
Tara may have been the one going to college; she may have been the one with the grades and scholarships; but he wasn’t stupid. He noticed things. And the thing he’d noticed most that night was the way the redhead protected Tara, and the way the two of them looked at each other.
He stared into the darkness and thought about this knowledge.
To Be Continued
Edited by: AntigoneUnbound at: 12/17/02 9:06:33 pm
! This part was so palpable to me with the way you capture the characters emotions (ie I too loved the juxtaposing of the love, joy, and playfulness of W&T with the anger, bitterness, and hate of Donny).
.
). And I so enjoyed the exchange about the sex shop with Willow answering Tara's question with ("I think they prefer the term 'Merchants of Pleasure...") 
, I can so picture their expressions in that moment.
at: 12/18/02 3:39:37 am
I mean, applied aspects of lesbian life...cave-dyke... LMAO! 
at: 12/23/02 9:38:32 pm