Title: Terra Firma Chapter 6: Breathe.
Author: Tulipp. Email:
tulipp30@yahoo.comFeedback: Please.
Distribution: Please let me know.
Spoilers: Everything.
Rating: R (I think.)
Pairing: W/T.
Summary: At home, Willow and Tara alone.
Disclaimer: All characters and various plot events that set up this story belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. I am borrowing them and making no money.
Acknowledgments: Again, thanks to Ruby. Again, for her thoughts about what “seeing red” means. And thanks to M. for Amy Lowell. And thanks to J.
Previously: Set three months after “Grave.” Willow and Dawn have returned from a sad and confusing summer at an English coven, complete with strange headaches and visions for Dawn and meditation practice for Willow. They and the Scoobies, unaware of Doc’s ritual to bring Glory back, were shocked when Tara, newly alive and thinking no time has passed, walked into the Magic Box.
Terra Firma
Chapter 6: Breathe
But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-coloured
With your brightness,
And the words you whispered to me
Sprang up and flamed.
--Amy Lowell, “Summer Rain”
Dawn, jetlagged and exhausted, was nearly asleep. She hoped she would dream tonight, happy dreams of Tara. And Willow. And Tara and Willow together, like the happy endings in the romance novels Janice was always telling her to read. She felt better than she had in a long time, and she wanted that good feeling to last.
A tiny doubt still pricked at her, though. A worry. It was probably nothing, but still. . . . She turned her pillow over to the cool side.
Xander and Anya had driven the three of them home before returning to patrol with Buffy and Giles. Tonight, of course, it wouldn’t be a patrol so much as an investigation. Buffy had said they needed answers. Giles had said they needed questions.
In the car, Tara had held Dawn’s hand. Dawn had noticed that she reached out and patted Anya and Xander’s shoulders a lot, too. She didn’t seem to mind when Dawn and Anya kept plucking at her sleeve, fingering her hair, touching her knees. Willow had folded herself into a shadowed corner of the backseat, on the other side of Tara. She had wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were cold, and she just watched Tara silently, with wide and hungry eyes. And Tara had simply looked back at her. She had touched everyone else, but she had looked only at Willow.
Dawn wasn’t sure that was…really normal. She could hardly believe what had happened, that Tara had come back. So shouldn’t Willow have been even more…touchy? They should have been holding hands, shouldn’t they? And talking? It made Dawn feel a little woozy, as if she were holding her breath.
****
The touching took hours. Just touching: the path of fingers tracing skin. Reacquainting. Reminding. Confirming. Willow convincing herself that yes, Tara stood before her, live and breathing and whole. Tara convincing Willow that yes, the skin she touched, the hair she ran her fingers through, the mouth and cheek she felt with the palm of her hand were all real.
Flesh and not illusion. Body and not imagination.
In the car, it had seemed safer to Willow to tuck her hands away, to press herself back against the cold metal of the car door. Once she touched Tara again, she wasn’t sure she would be able to let go. She would cling, clutch. She would collapse.
And anyway, even without touching, without the finger-kiss of skin on skin, Willow had felt Tara’s gaze as she had felt it in the Magic Box, when Tara had hugged everyone but looked at Willow. She’d felt it physically, as an embrace. It had encircled her. Her friends’ touches in the last months had sought to protect. And to comfort. But this touch—the clasped hands of this long, blue gaze—had held her completely.
It had been enough. It had been more than she’d ever expected to have again.
Once inside Buffy’s room, Willow had leaned against the closed door. Tara, thumbs hooked in her back pockets, glanced around the room. A calendar on the wall had caught her eye, and her forehead had wrinkled slightly. Willow had watched her silently. She’d heard enough in the Magic Box to know that Tara didn’t remember. She didn’t know she had died. She didn’t know anything that had happened. No time had passed for her.
What did that mean?
But when Tara turned her blue eyes toward her, the warmth of her gaze spread like kneading fingers through her body. It meant that Tara was okay. Willow could see that. She hadn’t been in pain. She hadn’t suffered. And she hadn’t seen…what Willow had done.
She knew she had to tell her. Yes, it might send her away. But Tara was alive, and so Willow could learn to live with that. It only mattered that she was safe. Should she tell her? She should tell her. But maybe…maybe not tonight?
Now, Tara reached for her, and Willow held her breath. They stood only inches apart, fingers barely touching. Willow’s eyes asked the question, and Tara’s eyes, clear and deep and knowing, answered. For that moment, words hung in the space between them, whole paragraphs of fear and concern and shame and uncertainty and reassurance.
And then Tara slid her achingly familiar arms around Willow and pulled her in, fierce and possessing. Willow leaned into the body she’d mourned, gave herself over to the soul she’d grieved. It was a miracle. The first embrace.
And they touched for hours.
****
There were no candles.
The curtains sifted only a thin stream of moonlight into the darkened room. But it didn’t matter. Tara could see what she needed to see. All she needed to see.
She could see Willow, finally here, finally safe.
Willow raised her arms, and Tara tugged the wrinkled shirt over her head, undressed her completely. Then she pulled her own clothes off, and everything that was tentative between them, everything that was uncertain, fell with the fabric to the floor.
They stood, face to face, naked and alive and sure.
Tara was growing slowly, slowly, into the understanding that somehow, she lived after having been dead. That her body was new. Without wound. Without scar. She did not feel that she had been…away…exactly, but when she concentrated, she was aware of a space, a tiny white pocket of empty time in her mind, when she had been…resting.
The only thing she knew for sure about that empty time was that Willow had not been there. And that she had missed her. That so much more than time and distance and grief had separated them. She thought maybe she hadn’t been aware of that gulf at the time, but now it peeled back the thin skin over her sorrow. For Willow. For herself. But mostly for Willow.
She watched Willow’s breasts rise and fall unevenly. She studied Willow’s eyes, pooled with wanting and a relief so vast it encompassed them both.
And then Tara leaned forward. With the softest of soft touches, with a whisper of lips on lips, she breathed life back into Willow’s mouth.
It felt like a first kiss.
It felt like the first time.
It felt like…when had the first time been? At the touch of Willow’s lips, a flood of deep and cellular memories washed over her, through her, crashed under her skin.
Was it when Willow had first knelt in front of her, her red hair brushing the tops of Tara’s thighs? She had clutched at that hair, legs burning, and she had thrown her head back, not recognizing the raw, animal cry in the shape of Willow’s name that had ripped from her own throat, from her bones, at the touch of Willow’s tongue.
Or was it when they had first buried their fingers deep in one another, surrounding, encircling, wrapped in warmth? When the electricity had suddenly come back on, the soft white of the fairy lights along the wall had thrown Willow’s body, sitting above hers, into relief. Her eyes half-closed, her chest heaving, she had seen the ends of Willow’s hair, backlit, as flaming red sparks around a dark and pulsing center. Moving above her, pressing down.
Was it earlier? Was it when she had first bent her lips to Willow’s breasts, her mind translating the sensation into pepper and apricots? This is what red tastes like, she had thought to herself, and then she hadn’t thought at all as Willow arched into her mouth, gripped her back with the nails of both hands, her moan low and liquid and full of wanting. Wanting Tara.
That was the first night Willow stayed.
But no. No, their first time had been earlier still. Fully dressed, sitting cross-legged in a circle of magick, fingers touching, breath matched, eyes half-lidded and heavy. When Willow had fallen back, Tara’s wrist had flexed back from the current, and an electric tongue had licked its way up her arm to her chest and down, down. As Willow’s body bowed, as her red shirt lifted to reveal the pale skin beneath, Tara’s breasts had ached. She had been overcome. And everything that had happened after that spell…every hesitant gaze, every knowing touch…was the confirmation of what they had already tasted. What they had known since the beginning.
The images sparked and flamed, red dots against the black of her closed eyelids, and Tara pulled her lips away from Willow’s. She felt that each time they had been together—each caress, each conversation—was tattooed on her nerves, inky memories. Each touch lived just under the surface.
Her skin was needled with the imprints. It burned from the inside out.
Had she lived…well…had she been without this touch for three months? Could that really be true? And could she have chosen, before that time, chosen to live without this touch for so long? It seemed impossible, when Willow’s every touch—every breath—coursed through her. So familiar. So necessary. Well, they would lay that time to rest.
She took Willow’s hand and led her to the bed.
She had been dead, and now she was alive. She had been reborn.
This was her rebirth. This was the first time.
Starting right now.
They lay side by side, breasts touching, legs entwined. Willow’s head rested on Tara’s arm. In the half-light, her face was shadowed. Tara moved closer. She wanted to press out the grief, to squeeze the mourning and sorrow from that pale body.
Willow was quiet, one palm pressed against Tara’s chest, feeling her heartbeat, listening to the pulse with her skin. Her breasts rose and fell. Tara draped the ends of Willow’s hair over her collarbone, like a necklace.
Tara touched her fingers to Willow’s cheeks, and they came away wet. She held the fingers to her own lips, tasting the salty damp. Three months of pain rested on her tongue. She wanted to take the tears away from Willow, to bear the grief for her, wear it on her skin so Willow could see that it was all that remained. She rubbed her wet fingers on her own face, smoothing two streaks of sweat and tears below her eyes.
She anointed herself with Willow.
****
Tara moved over her in the moonlight, one hand buried in Willow’s hair and the other like licks of flame against her thighs. Her long hair brushed against Willow’s face. Her breasts pressed against Willow’s breasts. Her lips grazed Willow’s forehead, her mouth, her neck.
Willow wanted to memorize every curve on Tara’s shadowed face. She wanted to pull her so close that there was no longer any distance between them, so close that they were inside each other. So close that they were part of each other. She wanted to hold on.
She held on. She felt the contours of Tara’s back with the flats of her palms. Her neck. Her hair. Her hands remembered what to do. Her mind was still numb with shock, her heart pounding with relief, but her hands knew how to press the space between Tara’s shoulder blades. How to trace a finger along the edge of one ear. How to hold on.
Willow gripped Tara’s shoulders and closed her eyes. She held her breath. She was afraid to exhale, afraid to open her eyes, afraid to change any small piece of this one perfect moment, in case it was, after all, only her wish. If this were the only moment they got, she wanted it to last forever.
But Tara spoke against Willow’s mouth.
“Breathe, Willow,” Tara whispered to her, and her hands echoed the words against Willow’s restless body.
“Breathe.”
Willow breathed, and her breath came out as a cry, piercing the darkness of the room as the last echoes of her grief left her. She breathed, and her breath came in as a long, shuddering gasp of life and peace and prayer.
It was a communion.
Around her, the air was honey-scented with Tara, and her skin was damp with Tara, and when her body exploded and her mind broke open into a thousand white and shining fragments, the arms that held her were trembling with Tara.
And when she opened her eyes again, spent and weeping with relief, Tara was still there.
****
Dawn awoke with a start to the sound of a cry. For a disorienting moment, she thought she was waking up in her room at the coven, hearing Willow sobbing through the bare walls. She resigned herself to it, to the familiar sound of Willow at night.
Then she heard the cry again, and as the sound penetrated the quiet of her room and then faded, faded, she recognized it for what it was. She might be only a teenager, but she lived with adults. She lived with their wants and their needs and their loves, and she knew sounds when she heard them.
She knew this sound.
It was a cry not of pain but of release. A cry not of grief but of healing. It was a cry of pleasure. It had been so long—so long—since she had heard that sound from Willow.
She rolled over, turned her pillow to the cool side, and smiled to herself, feeling that she, too, was finally safe and warm and home in Tara’s embrace.
Dawn breathed deeply and slept.
To be continued in Chapter 7, “Prodigal Daughters.”
Edited by: Tulipp at: 7/12/02 2:47:37 pm
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i took some antihistamine and i'm getting kinda sleepy. hugs tulipp!
at: 7/12/02 2:46:29 pm