Making Magic, Moving On - Anya/Willow for girlfromsouth

[doyle]

Eep. Just eep.

Title: Making Magic, Moving On
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Anya/Willow
Rating: PG. Nothing explicit at all (sadly)
Summary: Willow and Anya make some sweet, sweet... magic.
Notes: For girlfromsouth My requests were: after Selfless, Buffy/Giles UST, Anya and Willow bonding about being evil.


"Buffy should have sex with Giles."

The tiny ball of light winked out as Willow lost her concentration again. She blinked, and replayed the sentence in her head. Nope, didn't help.

Get out of the house, Buffy had said. There are way too many people here. Xander's place is empty, it'll be easier for you to do the spell there.

It had sounded convincing at the time.

"Anya, you're supposed to be helping," she complained. "And - Buffy should huh?"

"Have sex. With Giles. And I am helping." And, presumably to prove her point, she smoothed the folds in the map and sprinkled a little more rak'lesh powder around the perimeter.

"Careful, too much of it and it'll stain."

Anya looked at her speculatively, then dumped half the bottle onto Xander's carpet. "Oops," she said. "Clumsy me."

Willow couldn't muster up very much disapproval. She settled for mildly chiding, with a side order of empathy. "You're still mad about Xander's date last night?"

She sniffed, rubbing some of the powder into the rug with her thumb. "Please. I'm so over that."

"Hey," Willow said brightly, "at least she turned out to be a demon."

"I don't even care," Anya insisted. "I hope he does turn gay. He can go be with that Scott whoever he was drooling over. They're probably perfect for each other."

Willow decided against getting into a debate over the likelihood or otherwise of Xander actually being gay because, well, she'd sometimes wondered. Instead, she said, "I'm not really feeling anything here, magic-wise. How about we take a break?"

Anya unfolded herself and sprang to her feet, halfway to the kitchen before she got out the word 'break'. "I'll make coffee."

Too late, Willow considered how restless and distracting Anya had been all morning, and how much more so she was likely to be after caffeine. "Does Xander have any decaf?" she ventured. "Maybe some nice, relaxing herbal tea?"

Anya turned back, eyes lighting up. "Yes! We should look for proof that he's gay!"

Willow sighed. "Coffee it is."

**

"So why should Buffy... you know, with Giles?" Willow asked, curling her legs beneath her as she settled herself on Xander's couch.

Anya sat down beside her, position mirroring Willow's so they were face to face. "Well, it's obvious she's still pining for Spike. This vampire fetish of hers is understandable - I mean, the stamina alone - but she needs to get herself a warm body. They give far more satisfying orgasms."

Willow valiantly tried not to picture Anya having sex with Xander, and then Buffy having sex with Spike, and then Buffy and Giles, and failed on all three accounts. The visual she finally reached of Giles, Spike and Xander together was so morbidly fascinating that she completely lost the thread of what Anya was saying and had to ask her to repeat.

"I said, the Principal's an option, but he's either evil or marked for swift and bloody death." Her tone suggested that either of those were equally fine by her; she might have been discussing whether she took her coffee with or without sugar. "Xander's out. Obviously. So that leaves Giles. And, just between us," her voice dropped, "he's a very good kisser."

Her mental file of 'not to be questioned or thought about, ever' got a new addition.

Anya blew gently on her coffee, and took a sip. "Ugh, it is decaf," she complained. "He knows I hate this brand. And it's twenty cents more expensive. Honestly, since we broke up he's probably just been tossing money out the window."

She fell silent, and Willow felt stirrings of sympathy. It couldn't be easy, seeing that your ex had moved on - and then she thought about Tara, who would never drink bad decaffeinated coffee ever again, and her heart hurt.

It was getting easier. At odd moments, like when Kennedy reached for her hand under the table, the guilt could still blindside her, but those times were getting more infrequent. She could spend whole minutes in Buffy's bedroom and not think about bloodstains on her shirt, or the sound of Warren's scream.

Still couldn't do a simple spell without the terror of going bad again, though. She looked over to where they'd cleared floorspace for the map, and sighed. "I don't think it's going to work."

"Maybe she turned herself back into a rat."

Willow shook her head. "I think she'd be too scared of getting stuck again. She could've left town, I guess."

"Smart cookie," Anya muttered.

"It'd help if I had something that belonged to her. I mean, something more personal than that." She gestured to the small rat cage, long since emptied and retrieved that morning from the Summers' basement.

Anya made a small "tch", and Willow frowned. "What?"

"Come on. We both know you could snap your fingers, or wriggle your nose like that annoying blonde on the television, and rat-girl would pop out right here and dance the Macarena." Under her breath, but still clearly - and, Willow was sure, deliberately - audible, she added, "you need to get over this evil thing."

That was below the belt, the more so for being true. "And more with the not helping," she said, any sympathetic feelings she might have had for the other woman evaporating. "Listen, maybe you should go back to Buffy's place. She probably needs help with…"

"Because I have to too," Anya interrupted. "Get over it. And I was a vengeance demon for over a thousand years, which makes your little walk on the dark side look like a roll with puppies." She shrugged a shoulder, pushing her hair back from her face. "But that's not who you are. Nobody else is worried about magic making you evil again. Get with the program."

Willow thought about the words, the intent behind them, the spirit in which they were meant. "You're - helping, aren't you?" she asked cautiously.

Anya beamed. "And now we can do the spell."

She nodded, feeling more confident that she had a moment ago. "Yeah. I guess so." She placed her empty cup on the coffee table. Anya followed suit. "You know, if you want to talk about, well, being formerly evil, or Xander - not the sex stuff!" Please, definitely not the sex stuff, she mentally added, "you can talk to me."

They shared a smile. It was, Willow decided, one of the nicest moments they'd ever had between them, and she felt guilty for every time she'd ever felt frustrated at Anya's bluntness or her lack of understanding.

She was debating whether to share this thought when Anya leaned forward and kissed her.

It was close-mouthed, almost chaste, and lasted for barely a second. Willow's eyes widened, but she didn't have time for any coherent reaction before Anya pulled back and wailed, "it didn't work!"

"Um," Willow said.

"I mean, you're all pretty, and gay, and now I should be over Xander and not hurting or upset or jealous but I am!" Her voice was getting more and more agitated, and Willow was suddenly terrified at the prospect of having a tearful Anya to deal with.

"Okay," she said, her hands stopping just short of the other woman's shoulders. If Anya had taken doing a locator spell together as a come-on, a hug would probably be seen as major foreplay. "How about we back that train of thought up a station or two?"

Some abstract part of her brain noted that the kiss, brief as it was, hadn't exactly been unpleasant, and that Anya's hair was nice in its current incarnation, brown curls that looked as though they would be soft to touch. She pushed those thoughts into the part of her brain that held memories of Dawn dancing in that dress and any attraction to men post-1999.

"It worked for you." She glared at Willow, who shifted uncomfortably. "Oz left, and you were a wreck - believe me, it wasn't pretty."

"Hey!"

"But then you met Tara," she continued, oblivious. "And you were just - poof, fine again, right away. Like magic." Her eyes widened. "It was magic! I just assumed it was the lesbianism, but maybe it was the spells all along!" She leapt to her feet, tugging at Willow's hand like a child. "We can do it now. Make me be over Xander."

Willow looked up at her, struggling to find the words. She settled for gently squeezing her hand and saying, "Anya, it wasn't magic. And it wasn't because Tara was a girl." She looked at their joined hands, and thought of a different girl, and of a night when she was hunted and voiceless and terrified of more than the monsters outside the door. Lifetimes ago. "It was because she was Tara." She gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile, and disentangled her grip from Anya's. "You're going to get to over Xander. I swear." I did, she almost said, but it didn't compare. Xander had never asked her to marry him, except in long-lost dreams.

Anya looked skeptical, but she nodded, all the same. "Being human again is hard."

"Yeah," she sighed, thinking of Tara. Thinking of Warren. "It really is."

END

Comments

[blue-larkspur.livejournal.com]

Wow. Amazing. Very funny. I loved this. I wish we'd been able to see scenes like this in S7. Great job.