Alright, gang. You can blame Washi for this little revisit to one of my unfinished fics. Thank you for the praise. You see what happens when I am praised? I become industrious... let this be a lesson to all.
The Heart Rules the MindBy
DarkWiccan
Disclaimers: Willow and Tara and other characters borrowed from the television show “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” are the property of their creator, Joss Whedon, and his affiliates, Mutant Enemy, Fox, and UPN.
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Coupling: C’mon, guys, this is me writing, who do you think?
Summary: In a very different Sunnydale, a very different Willow and Tara struggle with their own inner demons to find themselves and each other.
READ ME! Notes: This is my first AU fic. Where you can very easily argue that all fics that diverge from the existing plotline of the show are AU, this is the first fic I have written that departs from show canon almost entirely. This Sunnydale is in “the real world”. The mask-wearing monsters of the week do not exist here.
However, this world is influenced heavily by my own belief system on demons and supernatural entities. The Scooby Gang does live in this world, but there is no such thing as a slayer or a chosen one and end-of-the-world prophecies do not lie in wait around every plot device. Rather, the Scooby Gang, made up of its familiar members, is a group of friends with varying belief systems, but similar experiences with the supernatural that have brought them together. But the relationships established on the show have been, for the most part, completely abandoned.
This story is really more of a character study than anything else. The plot (what there is of it) centers largely on W/T (of course, this is me after all) and as of right now there is no real end. I don’t know where this is going or if it will ever be done. I consider this fic to be a sort of writing exercise for me, and the closest thing to “stream-of-consciousness” that I will ever come to.
Because this fic has no true outline, I apologize in advance for the plot being at best vague. I also warn all of you lovely readers that updates will be few and far between as I plan only on returning to this story as inspiration strikes me, or when I become “blocked” on another fic and use this one to jog my creative muscles.
Right, all that nonsense being said, let’s get on with it.
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Willow Rosenberg sat at her computer typing away, trying to focus on the work in front of her, but finding it increasingly difficult to focus as her thoughts continually strayed to that of her new friend. Well not so much new friend as old-friend/new-crush. She had known Tara Maclay for going on five years now, but only recently had found herself growing more and more fond of the woman, and increasingly attracted. There was just one problem. Willow was gay and Tara was not.
Or at least, Willow didn’t think Tara was gay. It wasn’t as if she had ever seen the golden blonde with another woman. But she had never seen her with a man either. In fact, for as long as Willow had known her, Tara had never even spoken of being interested in anyone, male or female. It was all very confusing for Willow, who now quickly ran her fingers through her red hair in frustration. She had tried everything she could think of to get Tara to divulge the nature of her sexuality, short of bluntly asking her, which is something she could never bring herself to do, and as a result, the redhead continued to live in a state of total bewilderment.
Worse, she felt herself slowly falling in love with the other woman. Which only leant itself to even more catastrophic possibilities of rejection should it turn out that Tara was not gay or, the even more painful alternative, that Tara was gay and simply not interested in Willow.
Willow let out another sigh of frustration and achingly returned her tired brain to the task at hand. She’d figure it out eventually, or at least she could hope.
***
Tara Maclay was scared. Her mother was sick and dying of cancer. Her father was gone, having divorced her mom not a year before. Her younger sister was off in her own teenage world, using the natural teenage mentality of self-importance to protect her from the realities of her mother’s suffering and their broken home. Tara, in her mind, was alone, surviving only on the sense of duty to her family that had been ingrained in her by her mother her entire life.
She diligently carried a small wastebasket with a fresh bag to her mother’s room, removing the soiled one, filled with chemotherapy-induced vomit. Offering her mother a cool drink of water, kissing her forehead, holding her hand. Talking for a little bit of her day, telling her mother lies and embellishments so that she wouldn’t worry that her daughter wasn’t getting out enough and then excusing herself downstairs to clean up, or make dinner, or help her younger sibling with homework.
Tara blinked and found herself sitting halfway downstairs, unaware of how she had stopped there. Merely knowing that she had. The full little trashcan sat next to her, the odorous stench of its contents kept slightly at bay by the bag’s handles being tied tightly in a knot. She was unaware of it for a moment, rubbing her fingers in her tired eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose as she tried to summon up the energy and the courage to get on with the rest of the day.
She was almost content to just stay there on the steps and she probably would have if it had not been for the sudden jarring sound of the phone ringing. Tara leapt a mile into the air, so startled was she by the noise, her mom was trying to sleep and the phone would wake her. Tara grabbed the small waste receptacle and bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen, grasping frantically for the phone as she answered it with a rushed, “Hello?”
“Uh, Tara?” asked the soft voice on the line, the tone unsure.
“Oh, yeah it’s me”, said Tara, catching her breath, “Hi, Will.”
“Is it a bad time?” the redhead asked quickly, more than sensitive to Tara’s current home situation.
“No, no it’s fine”, the blonde assured her, setting down the small can and moving to sit on one of the bar stools at the island in the kitchen. “Mom just laid down to sleep and I was worried about the phone bothering her.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry”, apologized Willow, “I always call at the worst times.”
“Will, it’s fine”, Tara reiterated, “I’m glad you called. I was just thinking I needed to hear your voice.”
“You needed to hear my voice?” Willow inquired, working overly hard to disguise the glee the other woman’s statement brought her.
“Yeah”, Tara replied, the smile evident in her voice, “Whenever you talk to me I always feel so much better. Like everything is going to be all right. You know?”
In the quietude of her room, Willow did a silent happy dance. “Hey, anything I can do”, she said, meaning every word, “you know that.”
“I know”, Tara answered, then decided to switch gears. She knew that Willow had a crush on her, and truth to tell she honestly didn’t know how she felt about that fact. A few months prior, Willow had come right out and told her of her feelings. Or at least, Willow did Willow’s version of coming right out and telling her, which meant the redhead had babbled incoherently for a good fifteen minutes before finally running out of oxygen and collapsing in a nervous heap without really having said anything at all.
But Tara had gotten the message, however she didn’t let Willow know whether she had or not. It was something that Tara still felt guilty about, but not knowing her own position on the matter, she had decided to let the subject stay enigmatical. She was confused enough with her current life as it was and she wasn’t prepared to bring any sort of… thing… into the chaos.
“So, um”, she began, “what’s up?”
“Oh I’d just thought I’d call and see if we were still on for the movie thing”, Willow explained, “you know, me coming over and all.”
Shit, Tara scolded herself. She had forgotten. She ran the possibility over in her head and quickly determined that, given her mother’s present state, having visitors over to the house was probably not a good idea. But she wanted company so badly, and the idea of Willow as company felt so calming and… yet still there was mom.
“Tara?” asked Willow’s voice after a long pause.
“Oh”, said Tara, snapping out of her thoughts, “Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“About how nice you coming over would be”, the blonde answered honestly. Unknown to Tara, Willow’s heart skipped a beat at the revelation. “But…” Willow’s heart now fell into her stomach. “Mom’s not doing very well today, and I don’t think… I’m sorry…”
“Tara”, the redhead replied, quickly setting her own feelings aside out of concern for her friend, “Please don’t apologize. I totally understand. It’s not like we’re running on a schedule and this is an appointment we have to keep.”
“I know”, Tara sighed, leaning her head in her hand, “I just… I keep asking you to come over and then telling you that you can’t. I’m a terrible friend.”
“NO!” Willow barked. Quickly realizing the overkill of her vehemence, she re-stated more calmly, “No. Not at all. Tara, you are going through something… Well, I can’t even begin to imagine… It’s perfectly understandable… I mean, a lot of people go through this… Not to say that your own experience isn’t unique and important, because it is… I don’t want you to think that I think that what you’re going through is common, because it’s not. Even though a lot of people have had to and are dealing with what you are, it doesn’t make you or the situation typical… I…”
“Will”, Tara interrupted her mid-babble, trying to stifle her laugh. Willow-babble always made her feel better because she knew that whenever Willow babbled she was simply trying to put into words how much she cared, and by the number of words she used, it was obvious she cared a lot. “I get it”, Tara finished.
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Good”, said Willow, “because for a moment there I wasn’t even sure I got it.”
Tara couldn’t help but laugh at the cuteness of her friend’s statement. “I just… I feel so cut off from the world sometimes. Like everything is going on without me, which it is… But you always make me feel so much better and a movie with Willow just sounded so good.”
“It’s okay”, Willow soothed, “and we’ll get to it when we get to it.”
“How do you do that?” Tara asked suddenly.
“Uh, do what?”
“Here I was all ‘doom and gloom’ and five minutes on the phone with you and I feel like I can face life again. It’s so hard to stay optimistic these days. I mean, I want to be, I try to be”, Tara explained. Then asked again, “How do you do it?”
“It’s hard work”, Willow admitted, “There’s a lot of negativity out there. But I think I’ve got enough positivism in me that I can be optimistic for the both of us.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Somehow her friend’s simple declaration seemed to lift a thousand pound weight from off of Tara’s shoulders. “Thank you”, she said after moment.
“Like I said”, said Willow, “Anything I can do.”
“Yeah”, Tara smiled softly. “Listen, Will, I’m tired of blowing you off and I really want to do this movie thing. Only not tonight and not here. Maybe sometime this week we could go out? I really need to get away from this house and I want to spend some time with you, so I was thinking, have you heard about the new film of ‘Tuck Everlasting’?”
It was all Willow could do to not squeal with glee. “Tuck Everlasting” was one of her favorite books growing up. “Oh my God!” she said, not even attempting to hide the excitement in her voice, “I so want to see that! It was one of my favorite stories as a kid!”
“Really? I’ve never read it”, said Tara, “I mean, I sort of know the story behind it, but I’ve never read the book. The movie previews just looked really nice.”
“Yeah”, Willow agreed, “They really do. I was hoping I could find someone who would want to go see it. Disney made a movie of it in the mid-eighties and it was pretty good, but now with all the new effects and stuff that they can do, it should be really neat.”
“There’s another movie?” questioned the blonde. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, I’ve got it on tape somewhere”, Willow commented dismissively. “Hey, Tara, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to clear my evening schedule for the rest of the week, so that you can call any time you’re available and we can go.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, it’s just, I know that you’ve been really busy with work and running your own business and everything”, stated Tara, “are you sure you can spare the time?”
“Absolutely”, Willow replied, impressing as much into the word as she could. “Don’t even worry about it. Just call me when you want to go, okay?”
“Okay”, Tara agreed, “Thanks, Willow.” Then, for some inexplicable reason, the blonde felt compelled to add, albeit in a silly almost childish voice, “I love you!”
On the other end of the line, Willow swallowed a near-audible gulp. “I…” she began, trying to sound nonchalant, “I love you too.”
Tara paused, as she suddenly realized the depth of the redhead’s response to her sentiment, and it scared her a little. “Yeah, well”, she said, attempting to recover, “I’ll call you.”
“Sure”, Willow answered, “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Bye.”
“Bye”, said Willow, letting the word drift off as she heard the phone click off on the other end of the line. She held the silent phone in her hand, staring at it, not sure what to think about what had just happened. Had she said the wrong thing? Or was it that she had said the right thing, but the wrong way. She knew that when Tara had said, “I love you”, she didn’t mean it as, well… “I love you”. Did she? And now Willow was even more confused.
Oh well, she would go to the movie with her and see. Though a lot of people didn’t give her credit for it, Willow was preternaturally patient. Or at least she was when it came to matters of the heart. So she would wait, and bide her time and see if anything came of anything.
And if it didn’t, well, that was fine too.
That was the point that Willow had the hardest time convincing herself was true.
*****
It was Tuesday and Willow was grumpy. She sat at her desk reading through the Sunnydale Times and let out a vocalized sigh of disgruntlement as she refolded the mass of print and slammed it down onto her desk.
“Dawn!” she called out from her seated position.
“Yes?” the young brunette squeaked, poking her head in the office door.
“Why isn’t our press release in today’s paper?” Willow asked, staring the younger girl down.
“Um, maybe they didn’t get it in time to publish it”, she offered weakly.
“And how could that be? I gave you the releases to mail last week” stated the redhead. “You did mail them. Right?”
“Um…”
“Right?!” Willow stood up from her desk, her temper flaring slightly.
“Yes!” Dawn replied anxiously. “Yes, I did, only…I couldn’t mail them last week when you wanted because there wasn’t enough money in the petty cash for all the stamps. So I mailed all that I could last week and the rest yesterday.”
Willow sighed and slumped back into her chair, “Dawnie, why didn’t you tell me we were out of petty cash?” The redhead reached over to a locked drawer and opened it, to discover the empty till inside.
“Because I know how tight things have been lately and I didn’t want you to worry. You’ve been kind of stressing lately.” To Dawn the statement had made perfect sense… in her head. But out loud it sounded ridiculous. She prepared herself for the lecture that was surely coming.
“So how did you pay to mail the rest of the letters?” Willow calmly inquired.
“I sort of… used some of the money from my paycheck. But only a little bit.” Dawn quickly answered.
“Did you keep the receipt?”
This time the younger woman hesitated before responding, “Uh… yeah.. but you don’t have to—“
“Give it to me”, Willow interrupted.
“No, really it’s—“
“Give it to me”, she repeated, a little more firmly.
Exhaling, Dawn reached into her back pocket and pulled out the small, frayed piece of paper, handing it to her boss.
“Dawn”, she began, her voice stern, but undeniably kind, “I appreciate you’re trying to help. But by not telling me last week that we had run out of petty cash… it’s delayed us another week of advertising, and we are too close to opening to be able to afford the public not knowing about us. In the future, let me know what’s going on. Okay? You’ll see the money you spent reimbursed on your next check.”
“I’m sorry, Willow.” Said Dawn, her shoulders sagging.
“It’s okay, just… don’t let it happen again.”
“I won’t.” The brunette’s voice was tiny and dripping with defeat as she exited the small office.
Willow felt horrible knowing she had hurting Dawn’s feelings. She and Dawn had been friends for a little over five years and the younger woman had originally planned on partnering with Willow in her business venture. Unfortunately, Dawn wasn’t able to come up with enough money to invest in a partnership and had instead chosen to offer her services as an administrative assistant. Willow was just about to call after her to give her a pep talk when the phone unceremoniously rang.
“Graphics by Design”, she spoke into the receiver.
“Willow?”
“Oh!” said the redhead, a smile instantly gracing her face, “Hey, Tara. What’s up?”
“Um, nothing… I mean… not nothing because why would I call if it was nothing”, Tara prattled on suddenly, “But now that I think about it, it’s really stupid and I shouldn’t be wasting your time, so I’m just going to let you go…”
“Whoa, Tara, whoa wait a second”, Willow said quickly before the blonde could hang up the phone. “Okay. You still there?”
“Yeah.” Tara’s voice sounded stressed and rushed.
“Two things”, Willow began, “First, you’re babbling, which is my job. Second, nothing is ever stupid and you are never wasting my time. Okay, actually that was second and third, which would mean three things not two, and do you see what I mean when I say that babbling is my job?” Willow let out a great sigh of relief when she heard her friend’s light chuckles on the other end of the line. “So”, she continued, “what’s up?”
“Oh, I just… I just really feel like bitching and moaning to someone and the first person I thought of was you”, said Tara, grimacing as she heard how the words sounded coming out of her mouth.
“Um, well… I’m honored”, replied the redhead, a little confused.
“You’re the only one who seems to care”, Tara went on, “everyone else doesn’t want to listen because I guess they’re tired of hearing about how stressed out my life is. But you never seem to mind and… I sit here all day long taking care of my mom and my sister and I keep everything to myself and sometimes I just really have to let it all out, you know?”
“Of course! Everyone has to vent sometimes”, Willow assured her, “and I am always available for primal scream therapy.”
“Argh!” Tara let out a mock cry of vexation, giggling a little at the end. “Thanks. I mean, I know you have more important things—“
“Nothing is more important than the happiness of my friends”, the redhead cut her off.
“Thanks”, she answered softly. “It’s so weird, I mean, I really need to vent and complain and everything, but, I listen to my own complaints in my head all day long that even now, letting them all out, I am sick of hearing myself complain. I just wish I could stop complaining. Look at you! You never complain. C’mon, Will, complain about something, it’s your turn to complain to me.”
“Uh, you want me to complain?”
“Yes! Please, anything so that I don’t have to listen to myself whine!” Tara urged her.
Willow really racked her brain for something that she could complain about. Sure there was the Dawn thing that had happened a few moments before, but she was already over that the minute she had answered the phone and found Tara’s voice on the other end of the line. As a rule the redhead never held on to grudges more than a few days, if that. “Life’s too short”, was her motto and she lived strictly by it. Something to complain about? It was a tough question for her.
“Ummm…” she still wasn’t sure.
“It’s okay, if you don’t have anything—“ Tara began before Willow interrupted her.
“Oh! I know.” Willow announced proudly. “Traffic was a bitch today.”
“I know!” Tara quickly agreed, glad that her friend had found something to go on about. “Isn’t it awful?”
“Yeah!” She continued, “I was driving home from a meeting in Laguna and traffic was backed up all the way from the 405 to the 101! It was nuts! And I still don’t know what the hold-up was. Too many cars, not enough space, I guess.”
“Tell me about it”, Tara responded, “It takes two hours to travel fifteen miles these days.”
Willow relaxed a little in her office chair and even went so far as to put her feet up on her desk, reclining. “And drivers these days are so rude.”
“Yeah”, the blonde agreed. “So, not to change subjects but how’s work going? I know you had said that you were concerned about the advertising going out in time.”
“Oh, yeah, there was another little delay, but nothing major. The ads should start hitting the press early next week if not sooner”, stated Willow.
“That’s cool”, said Tara, her voice drifting off a little.
“But enough about work”, spoke up Willow, quickly catching her friend’s shift in mood, “I’m always talking about work. For our new topic of conversation we shall discuss… impressionist art.”
“Impressionist Art?” Tara asked, unable to hold back the initial guffaw of laughter at Willow’s ridiculously out-of-nowhere idea. “You mean like, Matisse?”
“Yeah, Matisse”, agreed the redhead. “Or maybe Picasso.”
“Van Gogh had a really cool self-portrait”, commented the blonde.
“Yeah…”
“For a second there I thought you were going to start telling jokes or something.”
“I could tell jokes”, offered Willow, “If you want me to.”
“Um, okay. But none of those really long jokes.”
“Okay, so we’ll stick to one-liners and question and answer humor”, Willow smiled.
“Sounds good”, said Tara.
“Okay, so this Irishman walks out of a bar…” Willow paused, waiting for the right moment to add, “It could happen.”
Tara thought about it a moment before breaking down into a fit of giggles. The redhead couldn’t help but pat herself on the back for that one. She loved knowing that she was making her friend feel better and she loved even more that her friend had thought of her first as a source of comfort.
“Okay, wait, I’ve got another one”, she said, “What do you do when an elephant comes through your window?”
“Um, what?” Tara asked, playing along.
“Swim for the door.”
“Oh! Ew! Gross!! That is so gross, Will!” Tara scolded her, despite the fact that she was laughing so hard she almost couldn’t get the words out. “Where did you hear that?”
“I think Xander told it to me in fifth grade” Willow admitted. “I didn’t get it at first. I was all like, ‘what kind of elephant was it?’ and Xander said, ‘a boy elephant’. I still didn’t get it so I asked, ‘How big was this elephant?’ Because I couldn’t imagine an elephant being able to fit through a normal sized window.”
“So what did he say?” asked Tara, “How big was the elephant?”
“Oh, about three and a half feet”, answered Willow, her voice a perfectly controlled deadpan.
Another pause of consideration was quickly followed by Tara busting up again on the other end of the line. Willow could practically see all of the facial expressions the blonde had no doubt just gone through. “You set me up, Willow Rosenberg”, she stated, trying to sound serious.
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Willow replied proudly. Then she decided to use the levity of the moment to ask a question that had been weighing on her mind since the week before, “So um, can I ask you something?”
“Sure”, Tara responded cheerily.
“I, uh, kind of noticed that you and William were all snuggly-wuggly on the couch last week at Buffy’s party”, she hedged carefully.
“Oh, that”, said Tara, audibly rolling her eyes, “I wish he wouldn’t do that. I mean, I know he’s supposed to be sensitive poet-guy, but it’s more like he’s lonely desperate for any kind of female attention guy. He’s always hanging all over me and, I mean, he’s been really nice about my mom and everything, so I feel bad about shrugging him off, so I don’t. But I so want to.”
Willow let go of a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. “Yeah”, she said, urging her friend to go on.
“And it’s like, at Buffy’s party, I was the only woman there who was single.”
“And… not gay”, Willow posed, dreading the potential answer.
“Um, yeah”, said Tara, her hesitation so minute it would have taken several re-watchings of a slow-motion instant replay to catch. “I mean… e-exactly. So William just kind of… clings.”
“Yeah…” Willow said again, trying to disguise the pain in her voice. Her mind was racing a thousand miles a minute trying to process a million hopes, dreams, fears, disappointments, and most importantly, Tara’s words.
“Ugh, baby formula”, the blonde stated with disgust.
“What?” asked Willow, unsure what baby formula had to do with Tara just declaring she was straight.
“My hands smell like baby formula.” Tara clarified.
“Uh… you’ve lost me…”
“Mom has to have a feeding tube hooked up to her so that she can eat. They fill the bags with this baby-formula stuff”, the blonde explained, “Sometimes I have to unhook her from it so that she can change clothes or take a bath. It spills onto my hands a little bit. It smells and it sticks to you. I hate the smell.”
“Oh… I’m sorry…” Willow was completely lost in the feeling of her heart crushing in her chest.
“It’s not your fault”, Tara said, her turn to sooth and comfort. She knew that she had just hurt Willow badly. But what else could she have said? Now wasn’t the time to admit she wasn’t sure. Wasn’t she sure? Why wasn’t she sure? “I’m going to let you go so that I can wash my hands.”
“Sure…”
“I’ll call you later and we can figure out the movie thing, okay?” Tara’s question had nothing to do with the movie they still hadn’t gone to see. It was her begging for her friend’s forgiveness. Forgiveness for breaking her heart.
But Willow was, for the first time, oblivious to the true meaning behind the blonde’s words. “Sure…” was all she could say.
They both hung up the phone without even saying goodbye. Tara curled herself up onto her bed, clutching the wireless receiver to her chest and biting her lip. Here it was that she had selfishly called Willow for no other reason then to unload her baggage on her in the hopes that the redhead would make her feel better. Which she had, of course, hadn’t she always? And how had she returned the favor? By breaking her.
Way to go, Tara, she berated herself.
“Why, Willow?” she asked the silent air of her room, “Why did you have to ask me that?” She played back the moment over in her mind:
“And it’s like, at Buffy’s party, I was the only woman there who was single.”
“And… not gay.”
“Um, yeah… I mean…e-exactly.”
Exactly. Was it really so simple as, “exactly”? And not even “exactly”, no, it was “e-exactly.” Exactly with a stutter. And she only stuttered when she was unsure.
So I guess it’s not “exactly” after all, she thought.
*****
“I don’t know, Will”, said Xander as they sat discussing the previous day’s phone call over dinner at the local Denny’s. “I mean, I’ve never been a pro at figuring out ‘the women’. You are talking to a guy who went through his entire sexual prime not having sex.”
“Yes, and while that is not only true but also incredibly sad”, Willow conceded, taking a sip from her ice tea, “this has nothing to do with sex.”
“But in a very real way it does”, the dark-haired man countered. “Or sexuality at any rate, which does lead to sex.”
“Xand, I’m not in the mood for word games or your unhealthy obsession with sex”, she sighed thoroughly perturbed.
“Will, I say again—Entire. Sexual. Prime.” Xander punched each word as only he could, with a strange combination of despair and pride. “A guy is going to be a little obsessed.”
“Yeah, but you’d be even more obsessed if you were actually getting some.”
The young man cocked his head to the side in brief reflection before quickly returning to the conversation, “Yeah, okay, I’m not going to argue you that.”
“It’s just all so confusing”, Willow sighed, dropping her head into her hands.
Xander rolled a piece of straw-paper between is thumb and forefinger, looking sympathetically at his childhood friend. His eyes softened as he took into consideration how ironic this whole situation truly was. Xander loved Willow. And not loved in the “Gee, you’re my best friend and I love you so much” sense. He had loved her since her family had moved in next door to his house, back when they were both still in grade school.
He remembered in perfect clarity the day he first realized he loved the redheaded woman sitting across from him now. She had only been a girl then, and he a boy. They had been playing two-hand-touch football in the backyard when he had tagged her with unnecessary force and sent her falling to the grass, hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She had started to cry and Xander had never felt so terrified in his life that he had hurt his precious friend. He had picked her up and rushed her inside and tended to the scrapes on her knees and the bruise on her forehead, and when he looked at her, even with her fiery hair in a tousled mess of a ponytail and dirt on her face, she had suddenly seemed a radiant vision and he knew right then what it felt to fall hopelessly and carelessly in love. He had been eight years old.
But if there was one thing that Willow had always been certain in. One thing that she had always been honest with him about, it was that she was gay. Always had been, and always would be. “I can’t help it, Xand”, she had said one day, “On some weird level I wish it was a choice, because then maybe I wouldn’t keep falling in love with people I can never be with.” Xander had only looked at her and replied with sad eyes, “I know what you mean.”
“What?” Willow asked, looking up from her hands.
Xander realized he must have spoken his memory aloud. “I just said, that I know what you mean. Uh, about being confused and stuff.”
“Oh”, the redhead acknowledged, taking a perfunctory sip of her tea as the table returned to silence.
“Hey, Will?” Xander spoke up carefully, “what if she isn’t?”
“What?”
“What if she really…what if Tara isn’t… you know… gay?” It was a question that had oddly never been asked before, or at least not out loud. “I mean”, he went on, “didn’t you say that she said she wasn’t? Doesn’t that pretty much clinch it?”
Willow shook her head, more out of trying to clear her thoughts then attempting to dismiss Xander’s words. Her eyebrows wrinkled together a little as she thought. “There”, she started but trailed off, before finding her voice again. “There was something about the way she said it. Like she… I…I could have sworn she stuttered. And you know she only stutters when she’s not sure about something…”
“You could have imagined the stutter”, Xander broached logically, “Willow, you’re so in love with her that… you could have wished that there was a stutter. The way you replay things over and over in your head you could even have created a stutter and now you believe it was there all along. I know about reading into things. Reading too far. I’ve been there.”
“There was a stutter”, Willow put down firmly.
“Okay”, he conceded, raising his hands up from the table in a gesture of surrender. “She stuttered.”
Willow desperately needed to change the subject before she started suffocating in her own doubts. “How’s school?” she asked, her tone lightening a little.
“Oh, you know, the same”, Xander answered, glad to move on. “Just started a new course on chaos theory.”
“Have I mentioned before just how frightening you as a psychologist is going to be?” she asked wryly, yet completely serious at the same time.
“I agree”, said Xander, sitting back into his chair. “Which is why I don’t plan on practicing clinical psychology, but rather forensic.”
“You see dead people”, Willow whispered playfully.
Xander nodded, “Yes, on slabs and with toe-tags.”
The redhead stretched her arms and extended the motion to check her watch, her eyes bulging slightly as she caught the time. “Ugh”, she groaned, “I have to go, I promised Carol I’d baby-sit tonight. She and Nate are going out.” Carol and Nate were both long-standing friends of Xander and Willow’s and had even asked them to become their children’s godparents. Both Willow and Xander had eagerly agreed.
“You want me to swing by later?” asked Xander. “I haven’t seen the kids in a while. Or Nate and Carol for that matter.”
“Yeah sure”, said the redhead, “it’s not like they would mind. In fact I’m sure they would be thrilled to come home and find us both there. Gabriel is getting big,” She commented as an afterthought.
“Cool deal, I’ll be seeing you later, then”, he smiled.
Willow stood and gave Xander a brief but warm hug before heading out of the restaurant. He watched her go. It seemed like he was always watching her go. And she kept getting farther and farther away.
*****
CONTINUED BELOW
"Promise me you'll never be linear." "On my trout."
Edited by: DarkWiccan at: 4/9/04 9:47 pm