Title:
Processing – What we do
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Probably none, and why the hell do we need to worry about this years after the show went off the air? Suffice it to say nothing bad ever happened to our girls.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all my W&T fic)
Summary: Late at night, after the girls’ have had their fun, Willow wakes from a dream and…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill.
Rating: Well, so long as you can cope with repetition of the word ‘Dildo’ then you won’t be offended.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. I doubt I’ll even mention anyone else.
Notes: No pet of mine has ever been doinked in this way.
Thanks To: This one is for Xita who once had a conversation with me about me writing naughty – non-W/T fiction. Hey, I’m doing it
[b][u]
Processing
What we do
By
Katharyn Rosser
Willow jerked awake with a start, sitting up in the dark.
Fairy lights sparkled to either side of her, one set was real and the other reflected in the mirror on the other side of the room. She was breathing hard, a little clammy she could tell and totally, delightfully, butt naked.
Okay, she knew where she was now. The last part of that gave it away, she really had no naked time apart from here, least ways not that didn’t involve a shower.
She was in Tara’s room. Tara’s bed. She was Tara’s woman. Reality all came back together and reality was pretty fine today – tonight – thank you very much.
A hand touched her back, circling up and down gently. “You’re awake?” she asked. Like Tara did that in her sleep.
“You woke me a little while ago,” Tara said. “You were dreaming.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it was… cute.”
“Cute?”
“You were making little whimpers,” Tara said.
That didn’t sound too great. Were whimpers…? Well, okay. Some whimpers were good. She’d heard some whimpering at the moments that – well, she heard them in the moments that things didn’t get much better. But in a dream? What had she been dreaming about? It was fading… and she didn’t feel sexy so it hadn’t been one of
those dreams.
And why dream it when you could live it anyway? She got plenty sexy enough being a naked lesbian in this bed for naked lesbians.
“I feel…” What did she feel? “I feel weird.”
“M-must’ve been an intense dream,” Tara told her. “Lie down.”
“Oh, yeah.” She rolled as she lay down, wrapping her around Tara and putting her head on her lover’s shoulder. Adjusting, seeking. Yeah, that was the spot. Right there when Tara’s arm came around her. It was almost reflex on Tara’s part and she’d been the one to discover it. Rest your head right here and Tara Maclay would hold you.
Cause and effect.
“Want to tell me about it?” Tara asked.
“I don’t think… I don’t know if I remember it.”
“Fair enough.” Tara kissed the top of her head and there was a sense of finality to the gesture.
So she lay there a while, Tara’s fingertips stroking her hair, her neck until they too – eventually – stilled. And she was still wide awake.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Oh, baby. Did I wake you? Again?”
“Hnn, no – I mean, did you?”
“What time is it?” Willow repeated. The only clock they could see in the dark was on Tara’s side of the bed.
“I can’t see,” Tara said, masking the fact that she had – probably – been at least a little asleep. Just nodding off.
“Look, would you?”
Tara moaned, rolled away from her and then probably found that the weight on her shoulder wasn’t going anywhere so probably just craned her neck instead. Willow was doing her best to be accommodating, she did that here – she was accommodation girl but this was just so damn comfy that… Her hand found Tara’s breast and that was comfy too.
“Will - ”
Tara managed to get her arm out and reach to try to get to the clock. There was sort of muffled crash and both of them froze at the sound of Miss Kitty yowling in protest. “What was that?” she asked.
“Umm.”
“What was it?”
“It’s two-thirteen.”
“What was
that?”
Tara sighed. “It was – it fell on her.”
“What did?”
“The toy.”
“Oh… Ohhh.”
Yeah, they’d been experimenting with mail order – okay, not with mail order but what you could get through mail order and naturally enough when they were plum tuckered out – both of them had been quite enthusiastic – they’d left it there and now…
“Poor Miss Kitty.”
“It’ll teach her to set up her bed under ours,” Willow said. Yeah, she was deflecting the guilt of having put it there. But what was she supposed to have done? Gotten up to put it away? Left Tara here alone in this big empty bed for several seconds? Possibly even a minute? No, that just hadn’t seemed appealing in the glowing aftermath of physical and emotional bliss.
Tara was still grunting, straining. “What are you - ”
“I think the harness is caught on something - ”
“Leave it,” Willow said. “Leave it, it’s late. She won’t bother with it and it already needs – well, it needs a proper wash anyway.”
“I guess,” Tara said. “Did you keep the instructions?”
“Don’t you know by now? I
read the instructions. We’ll boil and sterilize it.”
“You make it sound so sexy,” Tara said, with a sigh. Finally leaving it alone.
“Well, good night,” Willow said.
“I’m all awake now.”
“And that’s my fault?”
“Umm, yeah,” Tara said. “Kind of.”
“So…” Willow was waiting. This was about as judgemental as Tara had ever gotten with her and she was still as mild as… well, something that was really, really mild.
“So I’m all awake.”
“You want to snuggle?” Willow said hopefully, running a thumb over the somewhat softer-than-she-liked-to-remember-it tip of Tara’s breast.
“If you meant literal snuggles, then probably. But since I think you probably mean… well, something else. I don’t think that’d be a great idea,” Tara said, but she sounded reluctant. Open to persuasion. Except they both had class first thing and… yeah. Practicality won the night.
“What do you want to talk about?” Willow asked.
“I don’t – I don’t think I said I wanted to talk,” Tara said.
“Well, you didn’t want to snuggle and you’re all awake so… talking?”
“There
was something you were going to ask me, earlier. You know, before we opened the mail.”
Never had opening the mail been quite as… rewarding as that had turned out to be. Not even when she’d gotten her college acceptance letters. And the box had been addressed to Miss Maclay and Miss Rosenberg. It’d seemed better to send it here, because if it’d gone to Stevenson then a) Buffy might’ve opened it on her behalf – disaster – and b) she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself and seeing the look in Tara’s eyes…
Her sweet Tara, so overcome by shock/surprise/desire/lust. It’d been a sight to behold. One she hoped to remember almost as long as she would looking down into those eyes while they…
Couldn’t they snuggle?
“I’m sorry,” Willow said. “What?”
“You were going to say something, before you got like that. Forgetful. You were thinking about it again, weren’t you?” Tara accused.
“Weren’t you?”
“Not right at that moment.”
“But now you are,” Willow guessed, hearing the shift in Tara’s tone.
“We can’t – it’s so late!”
“I didn’t even suggest it. My lips were sealed.”
“Your lips were devilish,” Tara told her, yawning. “Not just your lips.”
“Not very sealed either,” she said, recognising the flaw in the statements.
“Not really.”
“So… the thing,” Willow said.
“It fell in Miss Kitty’s bed - ”
“No, not
that thing. The thing, I wanted to say. Actually it’s more of a question. Really it’s someone else’s question and I should know what to say, I should I know that because – hey, plenty of experience here now – but I was stuck and I didn’t know what to say and maybe you do and – and - ”
“Breathe, baby.”
She inhaled as instructed.
“Now, what is it?” Tara asked.
“Today… Well, I got asked the question.”
“Ah, the question.”
So Tara knew what she was talking about. That’d make things easier. “Yeah.”
“What question?”
Oh. “One of those questions I really should’ve been expecting. I mean, you know, I can anticipate test questions – I’ve always been able to focus in on what’s important and figure out what they’re going to ask. So I should’ve known this was coming - ”
“Will.”
“Sorry. Well, this is one of those questions. You know how I’m a lesbian?”
“I’d noticed.”
“And not everyone is, in fact most people aren’t.”
“Uhuh.”
“Well, I guess some people who aren’t are curious about the people that are – or not about the people but more the thing itself.”
“The lesbian thing?” Tara checked.
“That’s it exactly.”
“You know someone who’s curious?”
“Buffy. Buffy’s curious.”
“Buffy’s curious?”
“Buffy’s curious.” There, they seemed to have that sorted. Buffy, her roommate, was curious. And how awkward was that? Coming out to her was supposed to be… it wasn’t supposed to involve curiosity. She had the pamphlet and that was never mentioned.
“How curious…?” Tara asked.
“Pretty curious,” Willow replied.
“No, I mean… curious curious or
curious.”
“Ohhh… No. I mean no, not
curious. Not like bi-curious or anything like that sort of curious. I mean – yes, she boffs the undead. Or she has, but that’s about the limit of her divergence from the…” What was the word? “Hetero-norm?” Was she allowed to say that? Not ‘normal’ because she felt pretty damn normal and natural and all those other things when she was being at her most lesbianish with Tara.
But ‘hetero-norm’? That wasn’t judgemental was it? Not being able to see Tara’s expression she couldn’t tell if there was a reaction but frankly even that had to be better than Tara thinking her girlfriend’s roommate was bi-curious because that wouldn’t be a barrel of laughs.
“So Buffy - ”
“Yeah, she boinks the undead. Not exclusively, there’s been a few boys in there too – TA’s even. But yeah, boinking has been pretty much of the undead variety and who hasn’t had that fantasy?”
Once again it was one of those moments she’d said too much.
“Not that – no I mean, yeah he was pretty boinkable but that wasn’t my undead fantasy. I mean – no – my undead fan - It was a vampire you know, my undead fantasy was a female vampire. Except – kind of me. Did I tell you that was the first time I even considered that I might be – no, that sounds all wrong. Not because of her – I mean me. The first - ”
“Will, stop digging.”
“Right.”
“Buffy?”
“Yeah. Well, Buffy’s like totally… ‘What is it you do, Willow?’ and I’m like ‘What do you mean?’ and she tells me what she means.”
“And you couldn’t answer?” Tara asked.
“Well, I could – but you know that thing I do when I branch out into too much information?”
“Hmm?”
Yeah, she could imagine that Tara was familiar with the concept by now. “Well, I was definitely trying to avoid that and then I was thinking – what do I say? I mean, it never came up before. Everyone knew what I was doing then. Not because I told them, because I didn’t but because they just knew. It was what they did too and – even though I’m pretty sure Buffy’s seen some pornos I wouldn’t like to compare what we do with any of those!”
And that didn’t sound at all judgemental. Oh no.
“Not that,” she added, “what we do is worse than that. It’s better, clearly but also it’s not representative.” Then she thought about what Miss Kitty had in her basket. “Except when it is.”
“I see your problem,” Tara said.
“You do?”
“Not really.”
Willow sighed. “I… You know I’m not ashamed of you right?”
“I know.”
“And you know I’m not ashamed of being a lesbian? I mean, I’m down with dykes. One dyke. With you, going down, I mean. But - ”
“I know.”
“I just didn’t know what to say. How do you answer a question like that?”
“You c-could try the truth?” Tara suggested.
“What? All of it?” Willow was horrified. Open was one thing and Buffy might’ve been her best friend, the one person before Tara that she could really tell anything at all – even the girly things that you certainly wouldn’t want to say to a certain Xander Harris – but telling Buffy…?
When she’d said ‘tell me everything’ a few years ago to Buffy? She hadn’t really meant it. And she hadn’t gotten chapter and verse either.
“No. You could say that we make love, maybe give her a clue what that means.”
“I guess… I don’t think… I don’t think she gets it. Buffy is a fan of the peen.”
“Willow!”
“Sorry, but there it is. I think maybe she has a problem knowing what it means when there isn’t one involved.” There it was, that was how it had come across to her. “Of course, after tonight…”
“Willow…” Tara started to warn.
“Okay, I get it. Tonight and what is currently laying in Miss Kitty’s basket was/is totally not about that. I get it. Just not. So… help me?”
“I thought I did,” Tara said.
“No, you said hint. I don’t do hint very well. Remember the last time you asked me to hint? I told that lady at the coffee shop who was trying to set me up with her son that I was a big old dyke.” Literally. Big. Old. Dyke. By anyone’s definition, only one of those statements was true.
Tara paused. “Okay, I admit, ‘hint’ might’ve been the wrong word. D-do you want me to talk to her?”
“No!”
“Oh.”
“Not ‘no I don’t want you to talk to her’ but ‘no I don’t want you to talk to her about that’” Willow corrected hastily, seeing where she might just have made a boo-boo. After all it’d taken Tara that long to get brought into the circle of her friends and that had taken so long purely because of her.
Because I wanted something that was all mine. Just mine.
“Okay,” Tara said, sounding much happier. “Because, I don’t know what I’d have said.”
“Aha! You too.”
“No - ”
“You said it,” Willow said, “You said you didn’t know what you’d say, which is exactly my problem.”
“Because I don’t know her that well and it’d be weird.”
“I do know her that well and it would very definitely be weird. Maybe I should like, leave a book lying around?” It was a thought, and – she thought – not a bad one. She could facilitate the transfer of knowledge in as much detail as Buffy could stand without actually getting involved in it herself.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Tara said.
“You think?”
“I think if she really wants to know, if she’s not just making conversation and trying to be cool with it - ”
“You really think that might be what it is?” Willow asked. She hadn’t thought of that. But yeah, that was totally what Buffy was like. When she realised she should be supportive of something then she’d definitely feign an interest. It wasn’t that she wasn’t supportive, necessarily; just that she wouldn’t know how to express that. Buffy could be a little princess-of-the-universe self-absorbed. And thatw as okay, because she had to save the world on a regular basis.
And if she’d gone back and said all the things that did happen when two women were in bed – while he wasn’t at all sure she and Tara had reached ‘all the things’ just yet – then that would’ve been very, very weird.
Not withstanding previous conversations about Buffy’s personal life. But hey, she’d been boinking a vampire. A gorgeous one at that.
But a book… “What book?”
“Umm.”
“You don’t know a book? What kind of suggestion is that if you don’t know a book?”
“It was just an idea,” Tara said, a teeny bit defensive. “I never – look, I never did the reading.”
Willow was caught between giggling and genuine surprise. Since she’d come into the awareness of who she was she’d done plenty of reading, from all sorts of sources. The book store clerk, as well as the librarians who checked out her books, must’ve had a fair idea about her by now. But Tara hadn’t done the reading? That sounded more like a reason for why her homework wasn’t in on time.
“Never?”
“No. Well, I mean… If I heard that there was some scene in a book then I might look it up. I didn’t have much to go on, but it wasn’t like the library back home was blessed in the LGBT department.”
“Bookstores neither?”
“Nope.”
“That sucks.”
“Different part of the country,” Tara said.
“Sounds like a different world.”
“California is the different world.”
That was a conversation for another day – night – early morning. Right now… “There’s that ‘Wet Sex’ book?”
“Might gross her out,” Tara said.
“Really?”
“Think about the title. Could be… misleading.”
“Ohh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure, just because your dirty minx mind went there,” Willow said, “Buffy wouldn’t. Because I mean, eww. And not at all referenced.”
“It might.”
“Perhaps something simpler like… an encyclopaedia?” Willow suggested next.
“You know of such a thing?” Tara asked.
Yeah, that might be a little bit of a hindrance. “I could always check - ” Willow started. It wouldn’t take but a second but Tara’s hand restrained her. “What?”
“No computers after bed time,” Tara said.
Oh yeah, that. She had made a promise. What with all the Scooby stuff ‘bed time’ was a flexibly timed concept, but generally once her daytime clothes came off – and no matter what went on, or didn’t – that was bedtime. “I’m sure someone wrote one. Or I could leave a regular encyclopaedia open at a relevant page.”
“But which? And… I might be wrong but I don’t think they go into much details, even if they cover whatever you’re thinking of.”
“You’ve looked these things up, haven’t you?!” Willow was triumphant to have realised it. That… It made them kind of the same.
“I… tried. I was young, I had feelings and nothing to understand them with so… I went to the library.”
“And came away disappointed?”
“Actually,” Tara said. “There was enough there, over an afternoon, that I came away with ideas. One word led to another to another and…”
“I’m so proud of you,” Willow said, re-emphasising the hug and taking a moment to tweak her girl’s boob. Her girl. Her boob, in a way. Boob… great word. “And I told you words had power.” Okay, so Tara hadn’t denied that. Just the necessity of an approved words list.
“But it’s not solving your problem is it?” Tara wondered, stroking her hand as well as her hair now.
“I think maybe you just made the point that if Buffy is curious enough, she can go to the library. It’s entirely possible she hasn’t found that on campus yet anyway.”
“Willow. That’s mean,” Tara said.
“No, seriously. It’s genuinely possible. I mean, in High School she checked out only one book despite hanging out in the library – before it blew up – all the time. And that one book, she had it until she’d racked up forty five dollars of late fees.”
“Really?”
“Truly. She’s my friend and all, but Buffy and books? They don’t do the mixing thing. But maybe that’d all change if she was on a mission?”
“A mission to…”
“Figure out what women did together.”
“I doubt it.”
“You want to explain it to her?” Willow asked. “Because she might ask, she – like I – has been known to ask totally inappropriate questions from time to time.”
“Really?”
“Okay, she’s unlikely to muse of the lubricating qualities of olive oil while cooking dinner in a kitchen full of your dorm-mates,” Willow said. “But that wasn’t a suggestion about the oil. More of a comparison. Looking for the right thing to pick.” Not that she’d needed it with the… “Tara, baby. Pick it up. Before Miss Kitty decides to…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But she might do something catty with it.”
“You really want me to move?” Tara asked, clearly as comfortable as she was.
“No, but… It’s Miss Kitty.”
Her lover sighed and rolled from under her. Willow looked on as, in the dim light, Tara was caught in glorious profile. Boobs… lovely, lovely boobs. No need to go look those up. She was, pretty much officially, a Tara Maclay boob expert. More than that she was a boob girl, Tara herself had declared it.
Admittedly after some overt fascination which had been mutually rewarding.
“Okay?” Tara asked, putting their recent delivery aside in what Willow hoped was a safer place. “What?”
Willow was giggling. “Nothing.”
“Will, tell me. Bad enough we’re awake at this time, I don’t need to be kept up wondering what you were giggling at. Was it me - ?”
“I have two new words for the list, baby.”
“The list? Uhuh.”
“The list is important. We agreed this.”
“I’m pretty sure that I just stopped talking about it,” Tara said quietly.
“See! We agreed.”
“There’s a lot of Sheila Rosenberg in you, young lady,” Tara said.
“Now that’s just mean. Do you want to hear the words or not?”
“So long as you promise not to get up and add them right now?”
“I promise,” Willow said equitably. Give a little to get a little and she’d been getting a lot for a while now.
“Okay then,” Tara said. “Tell me.”
“First…” Willow pulled Tara’s arm around her again, resting her head right where it had been. Once they were sleepy again then she’d move, but for now this was comfort. This was home.
“That’s n-nice.”
“I think so,” Willow agreed. “Word number one. Ready?”
“Go for it.”
“Doink.”
“Doink?”
“Yeah.”
“Give me context?” Tara asked.
“Well,” Willow said, wondering what she could come up without using word number two. “Can I move to word two and do it all in one go?”
“For sure.”
“You’ll know this one, cos you know you’ve been done with it.”
“Uhuh?”
“Miss Kitty got
doinked with a
dildo.”
“Will!”
“She did! And I think – I want dildo on the list. Doesn’t it just roll off the tongue?”
“You tell me,” Tara said making reference to what had happened earlier.
“Minx. Don’t you like the word?”
“Dildo?”
“Yeah.”
Tara considered that, said it under her breath a couple of times. “Dildo. Dildo.”
“Good, huh?”
“Approved,” Tara said.
“I knew you would.”
“Because we had fun? There are other words that we didn’t approve but still liked doing.”
“True,” Willow said. “But you’re a dildo girl, I can tell.”
“Never say that to anyone else,” Tara pleaded.
“Perish the thought! It’s only for me. You’re only for me.” She delivered a kiss where her lips lay.
“Good. And Willow… not everyone might know what ‘doink’ means. So…”
“I won’t use it in that context again,” she promised. After all it wasn’t like it was going to happen again now was it? How often could a young cat get doinked by a dildo? It was a once in a lifetime event, surely?
“Good.”
“I remembered a little of my dream,” she said.
“Really?”
“I fell in love with this insanely beautiful, sexy girl.”
“Oh?”
“Uhuh.”
“What did she look like, this girl?”
“Like I said, baby. Insanely beautiful. Sexy. Helen of Troy time, but you know – at the time her face launched a thousand ships, not now - ”
“Willow. Spoiling it.”
“Yeah, well, I fell for this girl. Hard.”
“I’ve seen how you do that,” Tara said. “I can imagine.”
She just loved that Tara could say something like that now, not doubting for a moment that she was the simple cause of the real world version. “Well… I fell for her, I spent a lot of time with her. We made food together, made love and made lists - ”
“No way, you did not dream the lists.”
“I might have,” Willow said, defending herself against the accusation that she’d justify some of her more meticulous habits through the recounting of a dream. “I don’t remember.”
“So why did you wake up like you did?” Tara asked, obviously sleepy as she said the words through a yawn.
“Because it was a dream and when I woke up, it couldn’t be that wonderful. I was terrified of that. Losing what was in the dream.”
“And?”
“And it’s all real.” She kissed Tara, firmly and passionately on the lips. “It’s real. You’re real and we’re real.”
“We are,” Tara said simply.
They lay there a little longer and she started to recognise the signs of Tara drifting off to sleep once more and when she tried to pull her head away, to make them both more comfortable and less likely to wake each other again, she was insanely pleased that even in semi-consciousness Tara pulled at her. Possessive, wanting her right where she was.
“This, this is what we do,” Willow murmured.