This is a one-shot I just had to write. I like it; it made me happy; hope it makes you happy too. Happy holidays of varying sorts. Grab your girl, if you have one, or your guy, if you have one of those, or your whatever the hell, and have a good night.
Rating: PG13 for language
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NOW
There is only one first time for everything. For instance, no cup of Buffy’s mother’s hot chocolate with marshmallows will ever match the awe-inspiring deliciousness of that first cup, handed to me when I was fifteen and still too shy to call her anything but Mrs. Summers. And no amount of rewatching Fight Club will bring back the mindfuck of that night in senior year, when Xander and I stayed up and emptied a bottle of purloined red wine and I had to stop him from going out at three in the morning and trying to pick a fight with the first stranger he came across.
Similarly, nothing will ever compare to the first time I saw Tara MaClay punch a fully grown man in the face, turn around, and shoot me the most wicked, impish grin I’d ever seen in my life.
THEN
I hate grocery shopping.
I really hate grocery stores.
I really, really, hate –
“Fuck!” The can of beans slipped from the top shelf, knocked aside by my stupid clumsy fingers, and fell directly onto my foot. I kicked it off, not entirely graciously, and hopped a little. That was going to bruise. Bending, I picked up the can and dropped it into my basket. Then, resentful, I took it out and shoved it onto the wrong shelf. Unable to allow this mismatch to remain for longer than it took to glare, I snarled at the can and stood on tiptoes and put it back where it belonged.
Thoroughly irritated, and having recently (very recently) changed my entire outlook on beans as a whole, I strode out of the canned goods aisle and headed for the cereals. What I needed was sugar, and lots of it. Fruit Loops acquired, I swung around and made for the actual fruit; my mother didn’t raise no junk food addict. Or, at least, I could talk myself out of the guilt by buying some grapes to go with my diabetes. In the middle of telling myself that I would only have one bowl and would eat more grapes than loops, I rounded the corner into the wider expanse of the fruits and vegetables section and caught my elbow on a cardboard display. Whipping about, my mouth opening in an O of dismay, I managed to catch it before it toppled. However, in order to carry out this maneuver I was forced to drop my basket, which landed squarely on my other foot.
“Fuck everything,” I amended, and decided that as soon as I got home, I was going to have the longest bath ever.
NOW
Which, I mean, is not to say that she punches people all the time. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.
THEN
Moving right along from ‘irritated’ to ‘downright grumpy,’ I made my way to the long stand of apples, pears, and assorted berries. Time to get my health on. I’d only just started picking through the apples – I am notoriously choosy about those – when I heard a loud and rather uncoordinated crash.
Immediately assuming I’d destroyed everything, I jumped and looked around wildly to find the source. What followed were two very distinct and very fleeting emotions: relief that there wasn’t actually a collapsed pyramid of cans surrounding me, and supreme, maybe-just-a-little-malicious amusement at whoever had caused the crash. It didn’t take long to figure it out.
“You idiot!” The voice was male, and loud, and very annoyed. Which, coming from me at that particular moment, was saying something. I looked across the stand of fruit, hardly realizing that I was still holding an apple, and saw a man with a baseball cap and a scruffy beard glaring down at something too low for me to make out. Then, there came a smack, and a sound that made me forget to be grumpy because I was too busy being shocked: a little boy crying.
Edging around the apple section, I peeked around the stand and saw the man raising his hand again. The kid cowering before him, surrounded by fallen cans of what looked like cranberry sauce, couldn’t have been older than nine or ten. My mouth opened, and before I could think of any actual plan, a squeak that sounded an awful lot like the words, “Hey, asshole!” came out.
The man looked up.
I swallowed.
I am a small, somewhat scrawny redhead. Even armed with an apple, there was no way I could hold my own if I somehow had managed to trip into a… a fruit aisle brawl. Nervously, I glanced over my shoulder; there were no store employees. Why the fuck were there no store employees? A guy in a stupid blue vest showed up two inches behind me if I even so much as thought about lingering too long in a specific section, and now there was some asshole hitting his kid and there was no store employee?
No wonder I hated grocery stores.
“Mind your own business,” the man sneered, and once again my mouth moved before I could tell it what to say.
“Make me!”
Well, shit.
NOW
She’s usually a really nice person. Too nice. I once saw her take in a kitten with three legs because someone left it on the street; this was when she was barely making enough to buy her own dinner.
THEN
I wondered how fast I could swing my basket up and hit him in the face. I wondered if maybe he would rush me and would slip on the cans and fall and break his neck and die. I wondered if he was just bluffing, and wouldn’t do anything but sneer at me some more, because that was super effective. I wondered all of these things, but didn’t actually do anything except stand there with my mouth open like a moron with a death wish.
Child-abusing Asshat took a step forward, one arm going out to sweep the kid out of his way like you’d do with a dog, maybe, or a balloon. I swallowed, frozen, as the distance between us closed. He was getting pretty close now, only a few feet away, and the look on his face was uglier than that stupid can of beans. Feeling the outrageous need to giggle, I felt the apple in my hand and began to raise my arm in what would undoubtedly be a heroic and majestic first punch of my life.
Instead, there was sudden movement to my right.
“’Scuse me,” a quick, polite voice said. And then a woman with long, blond hair got between me and Asshat, drew back her arm, and landed one of the most solid-sounding right hooks I’d ever heard. And I watch a lot of Jackie Chan movies. She dropped Asshat, I dropped the apple, it was a dropping party.
Then, flipping the hair over her shoulder with a move so practiced it didn’t look practiced at all, she turned her head and presented me with the most perfect expression a beautiful woman is capable of making: a slow, crooked smile, her eyes alight with excitement and mischief and adrenaline and something that looked a hell of a lot like interest.
Naturally, I wowed her with a similar visual delight.
Which is to say, I stared at her, mouth still open, not even able to frown.
NOW
I know, because I was living with her. That stupid helpless kitten is three years old now, and I think he looks damn fine with a peg leg. Right?
THEN
Turning again, the blond Amazon goddess holymotheroffuckshe’shot stepped over the groaning man on the floor and went to kneel by the little boy.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, the back of her shirt lifting as she bent towards him. Torn between staring at the line of smooth, creamy skin that revealed and going to help stack cans or something – because goddess knew I was no good at comforting children – I eventually made my way over to them. By the time the little boy had stopped crying and someone had finally, finally wandered over to figure out what all the fuss was about, I’d gotten the cans into a nice four-by-four wall, perfectly aligned with the edge of one of the floor tiles. The blond looked at me, at the line of cans, back at me.
Her lips quirked, one brow lifting. I was in love.
“Sorry I stole your thunder,” she said, and I barely heard her. Shopping? I loved shopping! Grocery stores were beautiful! Cranberry sauce? Delicious!
“What?” I asked, dazzling her with my intellect just like Dad always told me would work. She looked amused.
“You looked like you were about to either brain that guy or faint.”
“Yeah, well, I’d have been lucky not to brain myself, while I fainted.” There we go! That was an intelligible response, at least.
“Then I guess it’s good I came along,” she said, and held out a hand. “Tara. Tara MaClay.”
“Bond,” I said, taking the hand. “James Bond.” Then, I shook my head. “I’m not James Bond. I mean, obviously I’m not. But I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry. I’m not actually an idiot, or trying to put some sort of geeky moves on you, or – ”
“Slow down, cowgirl,” the blond – Tara – said, and she actually let out a little laugh that was far sweeter than I expected from a woman who just decked a guy twice her size. “I’ll call you whatever you want, but I’d prefer it not be James.”
For a split second, my poor brain tried desperately to figure out how to construe that statement in a way that wasn’t flirting, because there was absolutely no way a girl like this would flirt with a girl like me. When I couldn’t do it, I grinned at her through the blush. Behind her, a guy in a stupid blue vest was standing with his arm around the kid and talking in a low, angry voice to the man Tara had hit. I ignored them all.
“Willow,” I said, and realized I was still holding her hand. Quickly, wishing to the gods that this didn’t have to happen in a goddamn grocery store, kneeling on dirty tiles, I dropped it. “Willow Rosenberg. Nice to be saved by you.”
As hoped, I was rewarded with another crooked grin. Her eyes, blue like wildflowers, shone.
“Nice to save you, Willow Rosenberg.”
NOW
So you understand when I say that she’s actually too nice for her own good. Or for my own good, considering her good is my good these days… And you understand that there’s no revisiting that moment, those glorious few minutes where Tara changed everything about the world.
Which is why I’m so grateful, so indescribably grateful, that I get to keep on making more of those moments, more firsts with her.
The thing is, I’ve told you all this story not because it’s cute – although, come on, we’re fucking adorable – and not because it was the most epic way of meeting someone out there, but because I want you to understand one last thing. I want you to understand why I’m doing this, to feel even just a little bit of what I feel for her. Because although I haven’t got a clue how I ever got so lucky, in a grocery store, of all places, and I definitely don’t understand why she wants to spend the rest of her life dealing with my messes and my stubbornness and my big mouth…
This is why I want to spend the rest of mine with her.
Because she’s good, and kind, and brave, and she has a really wicked right hook. And, guys, jesus, is she sexy or what? Sorry, sorry. Anyway. That’s all I’ve got; I never really thought I’d have to write vows or whatever this is supposed to be, so I know it’s not much.
Enjoy the party; drink our booze; eat our food…
I believe have a date with my wife.
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It's been too long since I wrote a happy thing. Maybe I'll do more of them.
_________________ I believe in the sun even when it's not shining.
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