©2002 Anne Hedonia
Rating: PG-13ish
to start, revving up to NC-17
Pairing: Spike/Tara
Summary: “You could always leave Tara unattended, without much worry
about her catching anything on fire...except tonight.”
Disclaimer: He is
Joss Whedon, millionaire. He owns a mansion and a yacht.
Archive: all you want. Just let me know where it goes – I love to visit.
Spoilers: Season 6 in general, “Seeing Red” and "Graves" in particular, and a tiny little reference from that brand spankin’ new Season 7. They start in the next paragraph, so virgins, turn back now.
AU = Anne's Universe! This happens after "Graves", but assumes that Tara didn't die from her bullet wound -- Willow mistakenly thought she did, and went on her rampage anyway. Spike did try to rape Buffy, but didn't go to get his soul. So basically, it’s a few months after The Time Things Got Way Fucked Up.
Author’s note: Beta thanks to the illustrious Herself, who provided bitchin’, accurate suggestions, and Lovesbitca, who did the same with a much-appreciated side of cheerleading.
Also, not to apologize, but to mention: There's a facet of the basic premise here that strikes some (including me) as a bit unlikely. However, I enjoy the resulting story enough that I still want to tell it. In case it pokes at you, I hope the words "suspended disbelief" will be a comfort.
More author’s notes at end.
Feedback: Ya, you betcha. ahedonia@yahoo.com
Tara sat on a small blanket up in the hills surrounding Sunnydale, overlooking the town in a scenic spot just off a stretch of mountain road. The grass was brown this time of year, so she'd had to clear quite a bit away in order to perform tonight's ritual safely. Wouldn't do to start a ceremonial fire to purify one's soul and end up ringing in the start of brush fire season.
There were herbs and a crystal to be used for this particular spell, and a significant artifact of her choosing. Thus, her father's little wooden box sat before her, looking small and forlorn in the fine, beige dirt of the wide cleared area.
With whispered words, she conjured a beam of energy that seemed to shoot out of her chest and into the box, then out the other side of the box and into the dark.
She intoned the words carefully, almost lovingly, savoring their significance, the relief they were already bringing. She got to the final syllables -- renovare, reparare, liberare - and her eyes snapped open and looked out clearly as the beam emerging from her heart dissolved. The rest of the energy swirled momentarily into the form of a hand, one that grasped vainly in her direction. A vague, ghostly form appeared as the owner of the hand. Though his form was indefinite, the fearful look in his eyes still carried. Tara wondered what her father was actually feeling just now. Probably no less than she was.
The hand flailed. The fear in the ghost's eyes became panic. The hand was withering, growing fainter. "Go with love," mouthed Tara, eyes beginning to brim over. The words were not required by the spell.
The specter and all the attendant light disappeared. The box burst into raucous flame and Tara burst into raucous, sudden laughter.
When the box had burned completely and even the smallest embers were out, she stood up and walked down the road a few hundred yards. There she strode out onto a bridge that spanned a small, deep open area.
She clasped a dried bouquet of some sort and murmured some more incantations, and sparkles of magic began to swirl around her body, coalescing down around her ankles, clasping her long skirt to her legs. Laughter still hung around her, bubbling out in small quiet giggles.
She seemed absolutely giddy with whatever was about to transpire.
++++++++
Spike navigated the DeSoto up the fire road, cursing the lack of signage. He’d never been to this Lookout Point place before, and the snaking, badly-marked roads had him buggered. Bloody typical that on a night when he was this impatient to find someone, she'd have relocated to the arse end of nowhere.
Spke had chanced a phone call back to Buffy, just to find out if Tara had mentioned anywhere she might be just then. Buffy had been polite with the information and the directions, even making a small joke about having to give directions out to the boondocks twice in one lifetime. Spike had expected to have to fight the impulse to take the conversation further, to find out if his apology had changed anything in her. But the amazing thing was, it didn't really happen. All he'd wanted was to know where Tara was, so he could share his triumph. Maybe he just didn't want to ruin things by pushing -- because it would leave him without good news to tell the Witch.
His Witch.
Bloody hell, he grinned, had no idea whether or not that was true. He still didn't actually know if she felt even the slightest attraction to him. Was he out of his bleedin' mind now?
He laughed out loud. If so, good riddance. Maybe his mind had been the problem all along - maybe a mind was only half of what a person needed, and no one's worked proper until it was matched up with the complimentary mind of another.
A few moments later he slammed on the brake and worked to throw the car in reverse. Through a break in the trees he'd seen Tara in the distance, standing on a bridge that he would have come to if he'd taken the last right, just a few hundred yards earlier.
While he was mostly just glad to have found her, her current location sat strangely with him.
++++++++
Spike pulled up into the wide turnout near the bridge, just in time to see Tara climbing over its railing and standing on the lip of it, arms out and face upturned to the sky.
He felt the world grind suddenly into slow-motion, and the cold fear grabbed him by the bollocks.
'No' was the only word for it. Screamed by every member of the dammed, of whose number he was suddenly one.
He was running, and yelling something, but he couldn't hear himself and what kind of universe would let her do this actually GO THROUGH WITH IT after ALL THAT'S HAPPENED and I'm not enough won't get there in time never enough CHRIST IF YOU LET HER DIE WHEN I GO I WILL CRAWL OUT OF HELL AND END YOU PERSONALLY YOU SODDING USELESS EXCUSE FOR A GOD…
He was suffocating on his own screams and she was tipping and falling gracefully out of sight.
He was failing to notice the magical sparkles trailing in her wake.
He got to the space Tara had just vacated and looked down, wild-eyed, unable to turn away...and then the “trail” of magic suddenly snapped into a tight line and Tara was reversing her trajectory, bouncing back up toward him, the trail curling like a spring. She fell again and he could hear her laughing as the trail pulled tight again, bouncing her gently before she started to swing at its end.
Spike felt like vomiting as the hope choked back into his lungs and his heart. He gaped down again at her, watched her drifting back and forth like the watch at the end of a hypnotist’s chain.
He held his head tightly with both hands, as if to keep it in place. “Fuckin’ Wicca bungee jumping??”
His answer was her merry laugh echoing through the night air.
++++++++++++++++
Spike didn't want to scold her after the way she looked, after she'd done some crazy Wicca thing to bring herself back up and was blinking at him in surprise. Her face was more than rosy, more than glowing.
It was transformed.
He knew she obviously hadn't expected him, wouldn't have scared him like that if she'd known he was going to be there. Yes, she had fooled him about her whereabouts and left him with nothing else to do but go hunting, but apparently she hadn't thought about that. He didn't want to spoil either of their moments.
Fuckin’ hell, was it hard.
He was still trembling, standing in the turnout. As she walked up to him she could sense his mood, and her face turned ruefully apologetic. When she put her hands contritely on his cheeks, they were warm, and made him feel better instantly.
She searched his face. "I'm--"
He shook his head, cutting her off. No need to go there, now that she was touching him.
Her smile bloomed again. "I was taking care of some business. I...had a little funeral for something."
Spike nodded, surprised to find a little anger blurting out. “Coulda been for you if your little mojo there hadn’t worked.”
Tara warned him gently with her eyes - were they talking about this or not? Spike blew out air through his nose - no, he was back to okay.
"I was also..." She glanced back at the bridge, searching for the right words. "... giving myself over to the Universe. To whatever the future holds.”
Spike nodded, remembering how to smile faintly himself. This sounded more promising. He found himself riveted by something in her eyes.
That twinkle was back.
++++++++
Tara’s heart began to pound in her chest. She was sure he could tell, too - a vampire could surely hear. She wished she could conceal her fear, but then, it was about not pretending, from here on in.
What she wanted to happen next would be the most important event of her little night of rituals. It would be the most natural, the only one that was magic-free, and yet somehow, ironically, the scariest yet.
What did she do now? How did she start this? She hadn’t planned it to be here, but suddenly she didn’t feel like hesitating. She'd always heard that with men it took little to no encouragement, which sounded so different from women, but then...maybe not.
He was staring at her, at nothing but her. That tickle-buzz of his attention was all over her…
…throbbing between her legs.
He could probably sense that, too, she thought, which somehow made it better/worse.
She decided she'd just go with where that feeling led.
++++++++
"Spike..." <OhGoddesshelpme...>
"Yes, pet?" <She's moving closer...>
"I…need your help with something." <Am I making a fool of myself?>
"Anything." <Anything.>
"I...I don't know if you'll believe this..." <The way he's looking at me...oh.>
"Try me." <Literally.>
"It's something I...I can't do...by myself..." < My hand is on his chest. My hand is on his chest!>
"Uh huh." <Her bloody hand is on my chest. I can't be wrong...>
"And...I only want to...with..." <Forgetting how to talk, now. Hands in my hair...oh Goddess...oh God...>
"Nnhhhmm..." <Pull her in, she's not stopping me God I'm not wrong I'm not wrong I'm not wrong...>
Tara mentally went over her first discoveries: men's lips were soft, too. Their faces had stubble, like soft sandpaper, and felt good, in a new way. They tasted kind of the same, except for the cigarettes - first time for that. And Spike's mouth wasn't warm, but it felt alive, and his tongue and lips were nimbly pulling her apart by the nerve endings.
Spike discovered how gentle a kiss could be and still drive him mad. He discovered that both his hands could nearly span her head as they threaded through silky hair and pulled her closer. He discovered how unbelievably bloody soft her breasts were against his chest as she accepted his pulling and added her own pressing.
Impetuously, he wrapped his arms around and pulled her in so tight he had to be careful of crushing her.
Tara's pressed her nose against the cool skin of Spike's neck and let her brain race. Men didn't yield like women when you embraced them - Spike felt like stone, everywhere. They also came with, um, extra parts, she thought as she dissected all the feelings tearing through her and centered on what was pressed against her lower belly.
Her mind reeled. She'd done that to him. This was the real thing, s-e-x like most people did it. Her stomach was torturing her with awful, delicious flip-flops. She couldn't believe he wanted her, he so wanted her...
...more than wanted her.
She could feel it in his near-strangling embrace. She was being handed his heart, all of it. Her blood ran cold a moment - this couldn't just be her little experiment. All this power and strength was now at her disposal, and if hurt, all this power could turn very, very ugly...
The fear began slowly ramping up, until he pulled her back to kiss her again.
His mouth roamed hers with a tender, unbearable reverence. His fingers were dancing almost nervously along her cheeks and she wasn't sure but she thought she heard a tiny sob. She opened her eyes to see the rogue tears escaping down his sharp, pale cheeks. His face was contorted in bliss, and breathtaking gratitude.
She let the fear run through till it was arousal, and trust. It didn't matter.
She jumped off the bridge in her heart.
Spike relished the feel, the idea that it was her hands roaming his back, his sides, running up to hold onto his shoulders. His own hands drifted down to brush over a full breast with a small, tight nipple. She groaned in surprise and pleasure, and Spike wished he could just crawl inside her completely, somehow.
Oh, God! Spike was touching her breasts, caressing and flicking and brushing and it was a much better thing than she'd ever figured on, somehow. He pressed into her so hard that she couldn't keep in one place, and soon felt her rear end bump into the hood of his car.
Spike hitched her up onto the car’s bonnet and let her drape back. He applied both hands to her breasts now, and was rewarded with the sound of her moans and the sight of her eyes growing heavy and her mouth falling open. God, she was splayed out beneath him, face glowing yet eyes drugged, her already-full lips drunk on his kisses. She was writhing, responding so honestly. <Can't go too fast, mate, she can't be used to this, don't scare her off...>
Tara impetuously wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him in closer. The resulting grind of her pelvis into his made her cry out, and only added to the yell that ripped from his own throat.
Well, then.
Tara was becoming increasingly aware of what all the shouting was about, the potential at least, this boy-and-girl thing. She tentatively placed her hand between them, seeking out the bulge in his jeans and rubbing it. Spike grabbed her hand and pressed it three times harder.
Well, then.
She didn’t recognize what possessed her as she sat up and let her hand travel to his jeans' button, opening it first and then his fly. She felt hypnotized, moved by remote control, and her heart beat so fast that for a ridiculous second she actually feared for her own health. She laughed, nervous and soft, and so did he, his eyes locked on hers, searching, so intense. It comforted her and made everything worse at the same time.
She couldn’t stop shaking. <It’s okay, he knows I’m not experienced, he knows…> She kissed him for reassurance, freely given, tentatively slipping her hand inside the fly of a pair of very worn boxers… <ohGodohGodhere goes...>
Spike wasn’t recognizing his own life. Oh, it had looked pretty familiar up to the point of the girl falling off the bridge, but everything after that was a complete derailment of his usual train of events.
The girl didn't usually bounce back up, and into his arms.
He hissed and jerked hard into her hand - Oh fuck she was touching him, pulling him out. He was shaking with need, held back by concern. He wanted to be the kind of bloke who’d stop and take her home and continue there where it was proper…but it was so delicious, so gentle, so obviously new to her, so brave of her…
…so…Tara.
So. goddamn. good.
She was looking down to watch what she was doing, then back up, reading his face with her large eyes and a childlike openness that made him kiss her fiercely until her hands’ movements made him gasp.
Tara nervously deduced by Spike’s reactions that she couldn’t be far off the mark. She squirmed against her seat on the car’s hood, reeling at the stabbing bolts of pleasure his reactions were sending to her crotch. Her mouth was mashing to his as she trailed her hand down her leg to reach under her rucked-up skirt…and met Spike's hand on the way, obviously with the same intention.
Her eyes opened half-way and she breathed into his mouth as he reached up her leg, into her panties. His fingers slid between her wet lips and unerringly found her clit, her opening. “Oh…!” She fairly jumped off the hood. He grinned like he had that night in the junkyard, and she laugh-moaned against his lips as his fingers kept moving.
His fingers kept moving, and so did her hands. Foreheads leaned together, eyes closed. Both their chests kept heaving and moans escaping. Their bodies hummed through a long moment of hot, desperate sensation and escalating need.
Tara felt the jerk of thwarted momentum as Spike suddenly grabbed her hand to stop it. She opened her eyes a little fearfully, but shouldn’t have worried – his look was so enflamed and needful she missed a breath.
"Not here," he gasped. "Not for you. Somewhere nice, with a bed..."
"Okay," she gasped back. She lay back against the hood and laughed. "Next time."
He looked at her pleadingly - he was trying here. Tara opened her eyes again, and Spike swore he could actually see her swinging from her former magic bungee in their sloe-eyed, luminous depths.
She grinned at him, soft and playful. "Go with it, Spike. I'm having a breakthrough here."
He was no match for it. It was the affection in her smile that convinced him…and made hope catch in his chest.
No thinking then, with the shuffle of both their fabric moving aside and down, and Spike’s erection springing free of his lowered pants, so pale and straining, and him close on top of her, and she loved the closeness and then scooting into place so awkward and funny and not wanting to hurt her and whispering don’t worry – Willow and I, we…just trust me and of course he did, still awestruck that she did though the thrill wasn’t soft anymore, it was urgent and hard like the pushing into her, like with the thing with Willow only it was better, hot and hard/yielding and indescribable, touching so many good places and squeezing and fuck she was molten inside, and he couldn’t believe he was there and she was letting him and he felt like his whole life had been worthwhile if it only meant her and him and now and he was gentle and fierce at the same time and it thrilled her and made her impatient, working on how to come in this new arrangement and the squirm and the squeeze was his undoing, sending him crashing and the look on his face, defenses utterly gone with the astonishment and release and she’d have to call it love, was the best thing of all, a clench in her heart as good as getting there herself.
He collapsed over her, breathing like a finished runner - out of habit, she supposed. Her hands went around him with a protectiveness she’d never imagined she’d see he needed, and she smiled with the dearness of him.
He rose up, looking at her like a little boy, wondering if she accepted his secret. She couldn’t wait to show him how much she did.
“Owe you one,” he breathed, a little sheepish.
She stroked his face and watched him smile, feeling the magic sparkles catching her again, buoying her, keeping her safe from the bottom.
They both marveled at learning the meaning of the world “content”.
“I’m not worried.”
++++++++++++++++
Later -- someplace nice, with a bed -- Spike had his way.
Finally getting to see her body bare, and touch it any way he wanted, any place he wanted, showering her with proper homage, losing his fingertips in those ample breasts and tracing the slope of every other curve. Paying her back for her sweet charity with her first time, oh my love you will be rewarded dearly for your courage…
When she could form thoughts, Tara could not conceive that a man could be this good at cunnilingus. She just didn’t know how he’d know, except that he did pay such attention to her every response and well, 100 years of practice and vampire senses and oh God she was climbing again and there there THERE hold onto that sensation clench down tight around it and his fingers and don’t stop don’t stop don’t STOP UNNNNHHH…
Sweet wash of hormones through every molecule. Rumble of a chuckle against her thigh and the scrape of stubble as he turned to kiss it. Oh, Goddess be praised.
He grinned all wicked as he came up to kiss her, not wiping his mouth and her eyes flew open to meet his challenge and grin back to his unspoken question, yes she was indeed used to that taste. Though preferably not from herself.
<Bastard.> Her own smile went crooked too. < In a good way.>
The moment made her thoughts wander along with the gentle sweep of his hands. <Should I be missing her?> she asked herself suddenly. <Am I wrong to be happy? Should I be preparing for something awful if she comes back?>
She watched him. His eyes caressed every bit as much as his hands. They found her face and she suddenly realized she’d gotten her wish, to drown in his attention.
She smiled. He didn’t seem to be running out.
<Love her already,> he was thinking. <Don’t know when I’ll be able to tell her, but…> The situation was already ten times better than the last time he’d given his heart. It suddenly seemed so simple to him why it had not worked. This was when it did. This had been the goal all along, but he simply hadn’t known what it would look like.
Her hands drifted down his ribs, over his hips to his ass. She squeezed mischievously, shifting her swollen, drenched pussy to rub against his cock. He closed his eyes and exhaled with the abrupt feel of it.
“I want to try it again,” she purred. A vixen already.
“Anything you ask for,” he breathed. The scoundrel in his eyes again. “’Specially when you ask for that.”
Without warning, he rolled them over to place her on top. He smirked. <New skill to learn, love,> he said with his waggling eyebrows. She cocked her own eyebrow back, processed her new location with a little chuckle, then rose up on her knees, experimentally reaching down to join them. He helped, enormously endeared by her inexperience, or rather, her openness with it.
She was about to sink down, when she stopped. Her eyes found him and melted a bit, and the question blurted out of her.
“Am I supposed to love you already?”
Bloody hell. Gobsmacked again. And racing with every emotion he could name.
He flailed for the best way not to scare her. He smiled ruefully, running his hands up her forearms. “Dunno. Not exactly the bloke to ask.”
She might have been scared, if not for the sheer adoration on his face.
She sank down on him slowly, with a tiny whimper. Spike squeezed his eyes shut and vowed to make up for the terrible things he’d said to God earlier.
She leaned over him, smiling. “Why aren’t you the one to ask?”
“Because…in the same boat,” he breathed. He opened his eyes, and found her eyes glowing softly at him. His smile widened. “Got the same ailment. Not impartial. Besides, I got a…bad track record.”
She shrugged. “I do too, sort of.”
“Been followin’ me round. Wish I could have it – what’s the word? – expunged.”
She nodded and smiled, then leaned down to kiss him. She tried an experimental move, and they both gasped and laughed softly.
“Consider it done,” she said.
But that wasn’t the truth, of course.
Neither of them was done.
++++++++++++++++
-End-
Final author’s note:
You wouldn’t know it to read me, but I am the self-recognized Fag Hag Queen of Los Angeles. Therefore, I have approximately one bazillion close gay friends (of both genders), a half a bazillion close bisexual friends (one of whom I even made out with once – not telling which gender :-P) , and a much smaller group of friends who fall into a gray area. These are people whose sexuality seemed to be at a turning point at some time in their lives, and was eventually tipped in one direction or another by a defining event, usually a traumatic or abusive one.
I took Tara’s emotional situation in this story – obliquely referred to as it is – from the experience of a woman friend of mine, who was with another woman for eight years but eventually found herself wanting to be with a man, despite previous, strongly forged notions about them. She’s now is married to a lovely specimen of the gender. She’s probably bi, but she didn’t have a choice in her own mind when she started out dating.
This is all to say that I was in no way trying to make the point that abuse makes people gay. It doesn’t. Gay is gay and straight is straight...and, uh, bi is bi, which is kind of the point. Sexuality, in my experience, is a lot more liquid and elusive to definition than it makes us comfortable to think.