Dawn/Willow: Reindeer Games
Dec. 24th, 2005 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleA slice of femslashy festive cheese with no pretence at plot. Happy holidays to all. *squishes flist*
Title: Reindeer Games
Author: Doyle
Fandom: Buffy
Pairing: Dawn/Willow
Rating: PG-13
Notes: for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
femslash_santa for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sangerin, who wanted Dawn slash. Happy slashtastic holidays…
Summary: Dawn and Willow play chess, make plans for Christmas, and absolutely, positively don’t have sex of any kind. Almost.
That Pierce Brosnan movie had lied to her. Chess, Dawn thought, was the least sexy game in the world. Well, maybe after Monopoly, but there was that time when she was thirteen and Anya and Xander had been babysitting, and she’d come downstairs too quietly and gotten scarred for life. Eight years later, it still made her shudder. She’d never looked at those little hotels the same way again.
“Your move,” she said, moving her bishop and sweeping one of the pawns off the board. Willow leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands and frowning at the game like she might find the secret of life there if she just looked hard enough.
Willow was losing, which was weird. She might have protested that the point wasn’t winning, it was playing the game; Dawn suspected that in this case, the point was to get their relationship de-sexified before they left for A Very Scooby Christmakkuh/Solstice so there’d be no rerun of last year, when she almost got caught sneaking out to Willow’s bedroom at three am. “I thought I heard Santa,” just wasn’t a convincing lie when you were almost old enough to drink.
“We could just tell them,” she said, and Willow knocked over the rook she’d been toying with. “Seriously,” Dawn pushed, “I can call Buffy right now. It’ll take ten seconds. ‘Hey, how’s Italy, Brazil’s great, me and Willow have been dating for more than a year, see you Friday, bye.’”
Uh-oh, Willow’s panic face. Hadn’t seen that since… well, the last big family thing where she’d suggested they just stop lying to people. “Bad idea!” she squeaked. “King of bad ideas! Idea made of badness! Dawnie, sweetie, this isn’t the kind of thing you can just tell somebody over the phone.”
She shrugged. “I told her I was gay over the phone. That was fine.”
“But it’s not the same. I mean, there’s ‘hey, I’m dating girls’ and ‘hey, you know how I was staying with Willow when she broke up with Kennedy, that’s actually a funny story, oh, and your best friend who used to babysit me’s been repeatedly violating me in interesting ways’.”
“I kind of lost track of the you’s and me’s there,” Dawn admitted. “Who’s doing the violating? Because that sounds fun.”
Another rook went over. It was a sad, sad day for the white army, and Dawn moved the board out of the way before they could lose any more casualties. Then she scooted across to the couch and dropped an arm around her girlfriend. After a second – she could almost hear the mental battle between ‘girlfriend nice’ and ‘argh-best-friend-little-sister-cooties-get-away’ – Willow leaned against her, her head dropping to rest on Dawn’s shoulder, one hand idly playing with the buttons on her shirt.
“I do want to tell them,” she said. “I want to tell everybody. I wanna do the rooftop-shouty thing. I kinda thought coming out was something you only had to do one time, you know? But Buffy’s your sister and she’s my best friend, and there’s Xander and Giles and everybody, and…” She sighed. “I think I’ve convinced myself it’s worse than it is. Like there’ll be this huge standoff where they’ll tell you to choose between me and them, and they’ll order me out of the house in disgrace, and because it’s in London it’ll be snowing and there’ll be this Dickensian street scene with orphans and little matchgirls and Cockney pickpockets all standing around pointing going ‘unclean! Violator of baby sisters!’ ”
“Cockney pickpockets?”
“I’m a witch, you used to be a Key. We have weird lives. There could be cockney pickpockets.”
There was really nothing you could answer that with except, “Will, I love you very much, but I think you might be insane.”
She moaned. “I know. This time of year, big with the crazy Willow making.” She twisted so she was lying across the couch, her head in Dawn’s lap.
Dawn ran a strand of red hair through her fingers. Once they got to England, Willow could break out the winter clothes it was too hot for in Brazil. She wondered if it was weird to find your girlfriend hot in huge fuzzy sweaters with reindeer on the front. It was something she’d have to ask her shrink when being an ex-Key, having a Slayer sister, living with a witch and working for the Watchers’ Council finally drove her into therapy, as she expected it would any day now.
Willow said, voice small and a little scared, “We really have to tell them, don’t we?”
Standing up and cheering would have put Willow on the floor, so Dawn settled for swooping down and kissing her. “Yes. We really do.”
“But not on the phone.”
“Wherever you want. Hey, we could get t-shirts made up, then we wouldn’t have to tell her.”
“She’s got no idea,” Willow sighed. “This is going to be such a surprise.”
Back during the couple of weeks when she’d flirted with Sociology as a major, Dawn had thought of the perfect subject for her thesis: Smart People Can Be Really, Really Dumb, Or, A Study Of The Woman I Love. “Uh, that time in the kitchen, at her birthday? I don’t think she really believed you were giving me CPR. Y’know, with the way we were standing up and everything.”
“I said it was magic CPR,” Willow said lamely.
“Plus I’ve been living here for months, even though it means teleporting to England every week for meetings.”
“I thought she believed you wanted to learn Portuguese.”
Dawn gave in. This must be that thing people had told her, about relationships being based on compromise. She’d let Willow keep her illusions about how super-sneaky they’d been, and in return she could actually be honest with her family and friends. And maybe she and Willow could share a bedroom this year. “All I really want this year is to wake up with you on Christmas morning,” she said, almost dying at her own sappiness, but she decided it was okay. It was Christmas, time of cheesy specials. A bell rang and an angel got his wings, Virginia found out there was a Santa Claus, the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day. It was all good.
Willow smiled up at her. “Wish you’d told me that before I bought you an mp3 player.”
“You know you’re the best girlfriend ever?”
“Except at chess.” Willow nodded at the discarded game. “Are we gonna finish? You would’ve had me checked in three moves.”
“Actually,” Dawn said, “do we have a Monopoly board?”
Title: Reindeer Games
Author: Doyle
Fandom: Buffy
Pairing: Dawn/Willow
Rating: PG-13
Notes: for
femslash_santa for sangerin, who wanted Dawn slash. Happy slashtastic holidays…Summary: Dawn and Willow play chess, make plans for Christmas, and absolutely, positively don’t have sex of any kind. Almost.
That Pierce Brosnan movie had lied to her. Chess, Dawn thought, was the least sexy game in the world. Well, maybe after Monopoly, but there was that time when she was thirteen and Anya and Xander had been babysitting, and she’d come downstairs too quietly and gotten scarred for life. Eight years later, it still made her shudder. She’d never looked at those little hotels the same way again.
“Your move,” she said, moving her bishop and sweeping one of the pawns off the board. Willow leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands and frowning at the game like she might find the secret of life there if she just looked hard enough.
Willow was losing, which was weird. She might have protested that the point wasn’t winning, it was playing the game; Dawn suspected that in this case, the point was to get their relationship de-sexified before they left for A Very Scooby Christmakkuh/Solstice so there’d be no rerun of last year, when she almost got caught sneaking out to Willow’s bedroom at three am. “I thought I heard Santa,” just wasn’t a convincing lie when you were almost old enough to drink.
“We could just tell them,” she said, and Willow knocked over the rook she’d been toying with. “Seriously,” Dawn pushed, “I can call Buffy right now. It’ll take ten seconds. ‘Hey, how’s Italy, Brazil’s great, me and Willow have been dating for more than a year, see you Friday, bye.’”
Uh-oh, Willow’s panic face. Hadn’t seen that since… well, the last big family thing where she’d suggested they just stop lying to people. “Bad idea!” she squeaked. “King of bad ideas! Idea made of badness! Dawnie, sweetie, this isn’t the kind of thing you can just tell somebody over the phone.”
She shrugged. “I told her I was gay over the phone. That was fine.”
“But it’s not the same. I mean, there’s ‘hey, I’m dating girls’ and ‘hey, you know how I was staying with Willow when she broke up with Kennedy, that’s actually a funny story, oh, and your best friend who used to babysit me’s been repeatedly violating me in interesting ways’.”
“I kind of lost track of the you’s and me’s there,” Dawn admitted. “Who’s doing the violating? Because that sounds fun.”
Another rook went over. It was a sad, sad day for the white army, and Dawn moved the board out of the way before they could lose any more casualties. Then she scooted across to the couch and dropped an arm around her girlfriend. After a second – she could almost hear the mental battle between ‘girlfriend nice’ and ‘argh-best-friend-little-sister-cooties-get-away’ – Willow leaned against her, her head dropping to rest on Dawn’s shoulder, one hand idly playing with the buttons on her shirt.
“I do want to tell them,” she said. “I want to tell everybody. I wanna do the rooftop-shouty thing. I kinda thought coming out was something you only had to do one time, you know? But Buffy’s your sister and she’s my best friend, and there’s Xander and Giles and everybody, and…” She sighed. “I think I’ve convinced myself it’s worse than it is. Like there’ll be this huge standoff where they’ll tell you to choose between me and them, and they’ll order me out of the house in disgrace, and because it’s in London it’ll be snowing and there’ll be this Dickensian street scene with orphans and little matchgirls and Cockney pickpockets all standing around pointing going ‘unclean! Violator of baby sisters!’ ”
“Cockney pickpockets?”
“I’m a witch, you used to be a Key. We have weird lives. There could be cockney pickpockets.”
There was really nothing you could answer that with except, “Will, I love you very much, but I think you might be insane.”
She moaned. “I know. This time of year, big with the crazy Willow making.” She twisted so she was lying across the couch, her head in Dawn’s lap.
Dawn ran a strand of red hair through her fingers. Once they got to England, Willow could break out the winter clothes it was too hot for in Brazil. She wondered if it was weird to find your girlfriend hot in huge fuzzy sweaters with reindeer on the front. It was something she’d have to ask her shrink when being an ex-Key, having a Slayer sister, living with a witch and working for the Watchers’ Council finally drove her into therapy, as she expected it would any day now.
Willow said, voice small and a little scared, “We really have to tell them, don’t we?”
Standing up and cheering would have put Willow on the floor, so Dawn settled for swooping down and kissing her. “Yes. We really do.”
“But not on the phone.”
“Wherever you want. Hey, we could get t-shirts made up, then we wouldn’t have to tell her.”
“She’s got no idea,” Willow sighed. “This is going to be such a surprise.”
Back during the couple of weeks when she’d flirted with Sociology as a major, Dawn had thought of the perfect subject for her thesis: Smart People Can Be Really, Really Dumb, Or, A Study Of The Woman I Love. “Uh, that time in the kitchen, at her birthday? I don’t think she really believed you were giving me CPR. Y’know, with the way we were standing up and everything.”
“I said it was magic CPR,” Willow said lamely.
“Plus I’ve been living here for months, even though it means teleporting to England every week for meetings.”
“I thought she believed you wanted to learn Portuguese.”
Dawn gave in. This must be that thing people had told her, about relationships being based on compromise. She’d let Willow keep her illusions about how super-sneaky they’d been, and in return she could actually be honest with her family and friends. And maybe she and Willow could share a bedroom this year. “All I really want this year is to wake up with you on Christmas morning,” she said, almost dying at her own sappiness, but she decided it was okay. It was Christmas, time of cheesy specials. A bell rang and an angel got his wings, Virginia found out there was a Santa Claus, the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day. It was all good.
Willow smiled up at her. “Wish you’d told me that before I bought you an mp3 player.”
“You know you’re the best girlfriend ever?”
“Except at chess.” Willow nodded at the discarded game. “Are we gonna finish? You would’ve had me checked in three moves.”
“Actually,” Dawn said, “do we have a Monopoly board?”
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on 2005-12-24 11:53 pm (UTC)Plus: I feel less apprehensive over posting Dawn/Tara!