Distribution: Just ask. I'll probably say yes.
Disclaimer: The usual stuff about Joss, Mutant Enemy, Sand Dollar productions, UPN, the San Pedro Beach Bums…just seeing if your paying attention.
Feedback: I have greatly appreciated the feedback I've gotten so far. This one I'm taking a little longer to write, as even Mrs. CaptMurdock, loyal literary critic that she is, has intimated that my previous stories were a little abrupt. So be it. You've been warned.
Notes: This takes place a few weeks after the events of "The Gift." This is a multi-part story, so check back here for more story after a few days.
Summary: Willow and Tara decide to take a vacation up north, though Willow has an ulterior motive…
Rating: PG-13 for "spicy talk," as opposed to "potty mouth."
Road to Nowhere.
Willow waited almost two hours after her last exam for Tara, in the dorm room that was ostensibly Willow's but that they really both lived in. This situation was rendered more permanent, as Tara's dorm room now had a rather alfresco feeling, thanks to a now-departed hellgod with superhuman strength and Lee Press-On nails.
The blonde witch finally walked in, shoulder bag full of books weighing her down a bit more than usual, frown lines starting to etch themselves permanently in her face. Tara threw down her book bag and threw herself on the bed beside Willow, who was reading A Wrinkle in Time. She blew out her breath through pursed lips, ending with a growl in her throat.
Oh boy. Willow looked up from her book. This can't be good. She cleared her throat ostentatiously and asked in her cheeriest tone, "How did your Lit final go?"
"It went lousy!" Tara almost shouted back, not even looking at Willow. The redhead actually jumped a bit. The slight motion on the bed was enough to alert Tara that she might have crossed a line here or there. She turned slowly with as contrite an expression as she could manage. "D-did I just s-snap at you?"
Willow was not really mad at Tara, but felt that a little mock-sternness was in order. "Yes. You did. How could you?" Then she saw Tara blanch and couldn't keep the pretense up any longer. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Don't join a convent, okay? I take it the final didn't go well."
"I don't know. Maybe. My brain is so fried I think I could mistake Flaubert and Bronte, and they didn't even write in the same language!"
"Which Bronte?"
"Any Bronte. I could go for two weeks without reading anything deeper than Calvin & Hobbes." Both girls, in the wake of the Glory situation and Buffy Summers' funeral, had been involved in a hodge-podge of make-up classes, lab work and exams. Fortunately, the college administration had bought into the 'drug-cult' cover story, including Tara's 'forced ingestion of psychotropic substances' by 'escaped mental patients.' That, plus the administration's sympathy over their friend's tragic 'suicide,' had enabled the rules to be bent enough so that the girls would not lose their GPAs, if they could make up the work within a horrendously short time.
"B-Buffy gives her life to save the world, but does that cut us any slack?" Tara had asked once during an all-nighter. "Shouldn't we get, like, I dunno, automatic passing grades because our friend…uh…"
Willow jumped in before she could finish that sentence. "I caught that movie on cable. Total stinkburger. I would've walked out on that one if I saw it on an airplane."
"Huh?"
"Dead Man on Campus. Way bad movie."
Now Tara flopped over onto her stomach, burying her head under her arms and letting out a pathetic kill-me-now moan. Willow put her book on the nightstand and crawled over to straddle her girlfriend's hips. "Oh, my poor baby," the redhead exclaimed. "Let Willow Rosenberg, M.D., see what can be done." She started rubbing Tara's shoulders. "Very tight there. Indicative of stress and other bad things."
"'M.D.', huh?" Tara replied, putting arms under her head. "I didn't know you were even pre-med….oooooohhh," she moaned as Willow's fingers kneaded her shoulder blade area.
"Of course. M.D. stands for Doctor of Massages." She chuckled.
"Mmmm. Willowhand – The Best Medicine," the blonde replied dreamily. Willow didn't say anything in return, but lifted Tara's shirt to rub the fair skin underneath. Tara shivered at her girlfriend's touch, which moved up and down her back, interrupted only by the elastic brassiere strap. Willow, however, was not in a patient mood, so her fingers soon diverted to the hooks holding the bra in place. This did not go unnoticed. "Oh, now, I see your evil plan. Get me in a, a helpless position and then ravish me." Tara rolled partially onto her side – carefully, as to not throw Willow on the floor beside the bed – and looked at her lover, blue eyes boring into green, her trademark lopsided grin growing into a full-blown sexy smile that made her nose crinkle in that way that made Willow's knees weak.
Willow leaned down to kiss Tara, what Spike would have called a full-blown snog instead of the usual peck, then broke it off and got out of bed. This earned her a patented Tara-Pout, which with her full lips was quite impressive. The slim redhead turned and smiled at her lover. "I have a surprise for you."
Tara tilted her head down and gazed upward, her eyebrows peaked, her best Sultry Look. "Umm…does this involve chocolate, or things that make interesting buzzing noises?"
"Neither…although that's not a bad combination to try on a future date, that I haven't planned yet, but you can rest assured I will, missy. No, actually, what with our finishing up our finals, I say we've earned ourselves a little vacation."
Tara sat up, a startled expression. "V-vacation?"
"Sure, why not?" Willow responded. "Get out of Dodge for a week. Hey, even Marshall Dylan must've taken some R&R some time or other. We just missed that episode, or they may not have put it in syndication for some reason. Old TV shows, that happens sometimes."
Tara rolled her eyes. "That's it. I'm cutting you off from TV Land marathons. You have a Rerun Monkey on your back!"
Willow put her hands on her hips in mock outrage. "This coming from the woman who stayed up all night for a Bewitched marathon!"
Tara shrugged. "That was different. That was, uh, business." She waggled her fingers in a circle around the room, indicating various Wiccan objects and by extension their shared lifestyle. "Y'know…business."
"Learning to wiggle your nose like Samantha Stevens does not qualify as 'business!'" By way of answer, Tara attempted the famous nose wiggle, failing to make more than her mouth and chin move side to side.
She stood up and walked over to Willow. "So, uh, where do you have in mind for our 'vacation?' London? Paris? Vienna?" She paused for a second, then blurted out "Burbank!" with a grin.
"Nope!" Willow responded with a grin of her own. She snatched some papers off the desk next to her PowerBook. "Santa Cruz!" she said, displaying several printed web pages of geographical and municipal information.
"Santa Cruz?" Tara said, her brow wrinkling as she scanned the pages Willow was thrusting almost under her nose. "Isn't that some hippie/New Age/mystic/surfer hangout up near the Bay Area?"
Willow chuckled. "Yeah, you'll so stick out like a sore thumb there, won't you? But it's also a bedroom community for Silicon Valley…"
"Ohhhhh," the blonde Wiccan interjected. "I think I get it. This is your big chance to visit Apple Computer. A pilgrimage to your Holy Land."
"OK, kinda busted on that one. But Santa Cruz has a boardwalk, and beaches and forests with real trees –"
"Something we never see here in Sunnydale," Tara said, smiling.
Willow rolled her eyes. The enthusiasm that she had hoped for from Tara was taking its time coming. "Well, there's also the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, just up the road."
Tara's eyes widened. "You mean that big house owned by a crazy rich lady who kept adding onto it, with the doors that lead to nowhere, and stairs that just up to the ceiling, and…"
"Yeah! Oh, come on, Tara, it'll be fun! And, we can, like, have some Alone Time together. We really haven't since…you know." Buffy Summers funeral was three weeks in the past, and still Willow could barely bring herself to mention her deceased best friend. "I mean, all we've done for three weeks is college catch-up work, with the occasionally Scoobie mission as a kind of snack. Oh – Scoobie snacks!" They laughed at Willow's dumb pun.
"Willow," Tara said, stifling her laughter with an effort, "how are we supposed to pay for this?"
"Already taken care of, courtesy of the Sheila Rosenberg Foundation," Willow said, beaming.
"Oh, Willow, you shouldn't impose on your moth—Waitaminnit. You've already paid for this? You set this up already? Willow, why didn't you ask me if I wanted to take off for a week?" Tara crossed her arms and glared, perhaps a bit more harshly than she truly intended.
Willow looked contrite and sad, like whenever one of her ideas was shot down. "I thought you might like to get away from it all for a week. With your bad case of Finals Burnout, I thought you'd appreciate this." Willow sat down in the chair next to the desk, her head hanging low. Tara sighed and squatted down, lifting her girlfriend's chin to look in her eyes.
"Sweetie, I do appreciate it. Really. I just think…I want to be asked, okay?" The redhead nodded without saying anything. "And, I think, we should, you know, make sure Giles and the others are okay with this first."
Willow swung away from Tara and stood up, an irritated grunt escaping her. After several seconds, during which Tara also stood, Willow turned around, her expression dark. "Y'know, I would like to have a relationship with you, that does not involve six constant companions!" A pause for mental recalculation. "Five. Five constant companions. I mean, what do they need us for anyway? Besides the spells and stuff, which, I'm sure, Giles and Anya, between the two of them, can handle most of that stuff anyway. Giles is much better now that he's out of "Lost In Space Weekend" mode. Dawn, she's doing better, going to summer school, gotten back into that good ol' Summers Work Ethic." She smiled. "Xander and Anya are busy planning the Wedding O' The Century, when they aren't busy…well, you know what busy beavers they are doing that stuff, and could I have picked a less appropriate animal metaphor there?" Tara giggled. "And Spike is…well, Spike is Spike. Nuff said." Willow then gave her pouty-lip and puppy-eyes a workout. "Can't we just go away? I think they can manage without us." Blink. "For a week."
Tara smiled. "Okay, you talked me into it. Not that you really, really had to. I take you've already figured out our transportation and accommodations and stuff?"
"Yeah! We take the train up, rent a car from the local Avis, and I got us a room at the Brookdale Lodge. It sounds great from the web page! It's got a restaurant that has a creek running right through the middle of it!"
Tara blinked a little at that. "That might put a damper on dessert. But I'm sure it's fine. Speaking of damp, I need a shower in the worst way."
Willow sauntered saucily up to her girlfriend and wrapped her arms around her midriff. "Mmmm. Want some company in there? Showers can be hazardous places. Never hurts to have a shower buddy with ya."
"Well, it does when the shower buddy uses all the shampoo." Over Willow's indignant expression, Tara smiled and pecked her on the lips. "But it's worth it with you." She gave Willow a squeeze, then disengaged herself to get her robe, hanging on a hook on the bathroom door next to Willow's. "Coming?"
"Right behind you," Willow said, slapping Tara playfully on the rump as she went into the bathroom. After the door closed, Willow went to check on the documents that were tucked discretely under her laptop.
One set of pages was the procedure of transferring academic credits to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Two other sets were college transcripts, labeled ROSENBERG, WILLOW D. and MACLAY, TARA J. The last set was selections from an apartment-rentals search engine, for Santa Cruz, California.
Satisfied that everything was in place, Willow slipped the papers into her laptop carrier, and went to join Tara, who hopefully wouldn't use all the shampoo, just because she had longer hair.
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Spedoinkle! Does Willow have a plan involving their transcripts and UC Santa Cruz? Will Tara discover the dastardly scheme of her True Love? Is this the end of Little Rico? (Wait. Sorry. Wrong movie.) See what happens in the next exciting (or, at least, mildly interesting) chapter.
Oh, by the way, after watching the rerun of "The Body," that Willow's dorm room has a door that suspiciously looks like a bathroom door. It's got a robe hanging on it, and we know it's not the closet.
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"Who am I? I am Commander Susan Ivanova. Daughter of Andre and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the iron boot that is going to kick your sorry asses all the way back to Earth. I am the last living thing you are ever going to see. God sent me." -- Babylon 5, "Between the Darkness and the Light."
[This message has been edited by CaptMurdock (edited July 05, 2001).]