Title: The Secret Name
Rating: pg13, probably, for sexy stuff eventually
Summary: I'm a librarian. And a college student. But mostly a librarian. Exciting things don't happen to us, ok? That's what I thought, anyway... until I met her. Until everything changed.
Usually I hate the Allen, Allen and Marks guys. They’re this law firm, I guess, which is fine; whatever does it for you, right? But they have these obnoxious ads all over town, and they go on a loop on local stations. It’s a cult, I’m sure of it. An evil lawyer cult. I’ve heard of those, there are documented cases and everything… But anyway, like I was saying, usually I can’t stand the stupid commercials. As soon as the old guy with fake hair starts talking about trust, I want to hurl.
Only that day, I have to admit, Allen, Allen and Marks did me a really big favor. Because without them, see, I never would have rolled my eyes. I never would have turned away from the TV in the window of the Laundromat and glanced across the road. In short, I never would have seen—
Her.
Some people have this, this shiny thing about them. An aura, maybe. A glow. Some people just draw you, right from the start, like their skin is magnetic and you’re the opposing pole. Or, you know, that’s what I’ve read. Seen in movies. Heard about from friends. I’d never experienced it myself, in all my twenty-one years. Until then.
The girl was sitting on top of a newspaper stand, the bulky metal kind that has a flat lid and stacks of papers encased behind a grill. Her legs, wrapped in tight black pants that looked too silky to be jeans and too opaque to be leather, swung lazily back and forth against the grate that kept the papers from blowing away. I let my eyes drift up. Long pale arms were braced against the top of the stand, elbows just touching the brick wall behind her, a dark tattoo of undetermined form twisting around her left upper arm and disappearing beneath the sleeve of her simple white t-shirt. Blond hair, the dusky sort of blond that looks like gold on fire in certain lights, tumbled down around her shoulders as, moving with the kind of slow grace I usually associate with big cats, she turned her head and scanned the street to her left and my right.
I realized I had stopped actually walking right as this mysterious stranger tilted her head back to center. Before I could turn back and continue towards the diner where I was supposed to be meeting Xander for brunch, her eyes met mine. The street between us melted away, becoming distant, and the fact that I couldn’t actually tell her eye color seemed vastly unimportant.
Even so, when she hopped lightly down from her seat and brushed off her thighs, glancing up and down the street as she took a step towards the asphalt, my brain abruptly came back to life. Nerves clawed up into my throat from somewhere down beneath my stomach, and I immediately turned away from the road and began walking. Looking was one thing. Actual audible contact was another thing entirely.
“Hey!” Shit. I kept going, hearing footsteps jogging behind me, biting the inside of my cheek. “Hey, wait!” A hand fell on my shoulder and I halted, turning around with barely-veiled trepidation. I hate the fact that I’m so easily intimidated by attractive women, but it’s not like it’s entirely my fault. I’ve had so little practice, after all. There aren’t many options for a gay girl in Sunnydale, which suffers from what I like to call Small Town Syndrome. I braced myself, and smiled.
“Hi.” Hi? Hi? She didn’t make a face, or laugh, or do anything bad, but I still felt dumb. Also, part of me noted, her eyes were in fact blue. The sort of stormy, complicated blue of a summer storm. And her hand was still on my shoulder.
“Hi,” she said, one side of her mouth curling up in a reflexive, impish grin. She dropped her hand, the warmth of her fingers lingering on my upper arm. “Do you live around here?”
“Um,” I said, intelligence just dripping from my fingertips. “Yes.” Was I blushing? I was probably blushing. The grin widened.
“Great! How do you feel about being commandeered?”
“I’m sorry?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t even care. She was looking at me like I had the answer to a question she’d been dying to ask for years, and as long as she kept looking at me like that, I’d say whatever she wanted.
“Are you doing anything incredibly important right now?” This seeming non-sequitor made me blink. Was she asking me on a date? No, of course not, don’t leap to stupid conclusions just because she has pretty hair and a tattoo and a lot of—shirt.
“I’m… going to eat food, but that’s not really vital, no,” I tried, and her eyes sparkled with amusement. The pants were some kind of stretchy, clingy material. They hid nothing.
“Would you mind showing me where the nearest preschool is?”
I blinked again.
“Uh, sure.” Preschool? Did I even know where the nearest preschool was? Did I even know where any preschools were? She fell into step beside me and I realized that I’d started walking, and was relieved to remember that of course I knew a preschool; my best friend’s daughter was enrolled there and I picked her up at least one afternoon per week. This girl, this girl who looked like some sort of punked-out Greek goddess and asked about commandeering and childcare, was throwing me off more completely than I could recall ever having been thrown before. Unnerved, I stuck my hands in my pockets and considered calling Xander. Before I could pull out my phone, she ducked her chin and tossed her head back again, sending the sheet of blond hair over one shoulder to leave her profile bare and beautiful. I was sufficiently distracted.
“So what’s your name?” she asked.
“Willow,” I answered, and somehow the saying of it made this whole situation more surreal. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me on a regular basis. Or, you know, ever. I’m Willow Rosenberg. I work in a library to pay for my degree in computer science. Doesn’t that say it all? I glanced at her, self-conscious about my own red bob. Buffy calls it sleek, and sometimes it does look pretty sexy if I do say so myself, but just then I was feeling… well, just a bit out of my league. “And you are?” Jeez, could you sound any more 19th century?
“Call me Tara,” she said after a slight pause, her lips just barely curved with an amusement that seemed unwarranted. She was lying, I was sure of it, but for some reason I just didn’t care.
“Tara,” I repeated, savoring it. “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, believe me,” she said, her shoulder brushing mine as we turned down Maple, “the pleasure is mine.”
