Looking at some of the episode guides, I have reminded myself when I set this. This was set in the window between Older and Far Away and As You Were in season six. Here are some story points to remind one of that time. Willow and Tara are broken up but the coldness of Tara towards Willow has thawed because of the events of Buffy's birthday party when everyone was sealed into the Summer home. Willow is going cold turkey from her magic addiction. Spike and Buffy are in the middle of their destructive sexual relationship, with the only one aware of it is Tara ( Dead Things final scene.) The Summer's finances are a constant concern with the episode DoubleMeat Palace are only a few episodes in the past.

As I reread this a few times, I realize that this story was an attempt on my part to 'get' lesbian relationships. Not in the guy way, the way it is presented in male-oriented porn, but how it really is. Plus, at this time this was a damaged relationship and the power dynamics of the characters are reversed, making it interesting to extrapolate from. Finally, I think my fondness for the Willow/Tara characters and relationship makes them easiest for me to 'get it,' to so speak, so that if I am ever going to 'get' lesbian relationships, it will start through their prism.

And that is way too much thinking and thought experiments to start off a story, but as I am submerging myself back into it, I find myself having to directly examine what the hell is going on in order to 'crash' back into it.

This was written in alternating POVs, so I will probably post one POV a day for the time being...

Willow examined herself in the window of the consignment store next to the Magic Shop. There were vintage clothes on display, presumbly the nicest there, but thankfully she knew better to go in, Buffy had repeated the annual 'fashion lesson' after she brought down Willow just inches from going out the house's door a few mornings ago. And with that memory it gave her mind the excuse it needed to wander off her self-examination and her precautions to the thought that perhaps Buffy could solve her money problems by merely reselling vintage clothes of some of the more well-dressed vamps she dusted but then there was the whole dusting problem and having to rip the clothes off the vamp before they went all poofy which Willow was sure that Buffy after Angel had no desire to see any vampire in the buff (buff! Buffy! feel the funny!) but a charm of cloth constancy would save the clothes except for the hole in the chest but that could be fixed with a phased stake resonating back onlyinto a heart and then Buffy wouldn’t have to work all the time and they could spend more time together because all Willow had was time and time and thinking of cleverer ways to pass the time…

Oh hey, charms and ghost stakes are magic, and MAGIC IS BAD!

No thinking about charms, spells, curses, incantations, the musty old books (oh, how she missed the smell of the musty old books, only allowing herself now to indulge in them when there was research, rather than skipping about in them, reading and learning and experimenting and frolicking and casting…

What was that about Magic again, you know, it being BAD?

Focus past that.

And not by Focusing on the ambient energies that crackled under Sunnydale's surface.

Information and thoughts had always tumbled through Willow. At first it had been programs and commands and the languages of logic but then of leylines and symbolic runes and the languages of power. The obsessive thoughts of magic was one of the signs that she was nervous. Well, being more obsessive that usual, thinking of it constantly rather than every other minute...

Is that what Xander meant about how he (and all boys) thought?

The mental slap she gave herself derailed herself back.

She hated doing this.

She needed to do this.

She felt the Higgs bosons jumping just within her skin, lightening her one second, intensifying the next. She needed to finish her physics homework.

The loop of thoughts, recriminations and desires, especially desires, needed to be stilled.

She looked in the window again, seeing her reflection

Seeing the hat on the other side of the window.

It looked nice, and retro, and her hair would just peek out from underneath, nice and baggy and shapeless and could conceal…

Well, this not obsessing and not getting distracted was not going very well, now was it?

She hadn’t thought it would be so easy to shoplift from the Magic Shop. But after everyone sat down to talk with Dawn about her shoplifting after Buffy's birthday, it turned out it was so easy. Anya ranted about it, planning to shackle an Eeyer by the doorway to stop it from happening ever again but Xander persuaded Anya that the 4 foot incisors Eeyers spat out would shorten customers' shopping time leading to smaller purchases.

But it was still so easy.

Willow wondered how she never even thought about it. All that temptation in small and affordable and thus very concealable packages.

But now that she knew, it was all that she thought about, preying on her mind, heckling with reminders on just how easy it would be fix things, with just a pinch of that, sniff of this, and a spoonful of sugar to wash it all down.

So, here she was, outside the shop, double-checking her clothes to make sure that there weren’t places to hide even a single vial. Just black leggings with no pockets, open sandals that hide nothing and a flowery loose shirt that couldn’t hold anything if it tried. A school book to be carried, not stowed away in a cavernous bag. A transparent plastic pencil bag to carry her highlighters, green and (continued...)

( continues...) purple and yellow and the organizational chart she hadn't updated since fourth grade and the great red highlighter debacle, her keys and cloth wallet. She even went without a bra today, not that she really needed it, just so her décolletage wouldn’t attract anything. Not that it ever attracted any attention.

She missed Tara.

It was only for the next few days. She would go back to her old, normal clothes. The ones from when she was not loved, unattractive and unnoticeable. Once the thought wasn’t so fresh, once she got it back under control, everything would be fine.

Control made everything fine. Really.

With that reassuring thought, she turned and walked towards the shop.

And that damn bell rang as she entered, warning everyone she was entering.

She so was going to fix that one day.

Hope you get a laugh out of this bit of silliness. Buffy/DirtyJobs Edited to fix linkage. I know there are some fans here, because I think I heard about it on this board.

Hee.

erikaj - you know on Moonlight they've got a character whose job is to clean up after vampire kills. (IJS)

Really? "Good God, woman!" (/Rowe)

Tara struggled to raise the axe again to block, wishing she knew any other way. Her arms trembled from all the blows absorbed and the few delivered. She had been doing this for an hour, barely keeping up. She had prepared, wearing her rarely-worn exercise clothes, a sport bra top and biker shorts, but her entire body was still soaked in sweat and yet she still felt flush. Her hair had been tied back beforehand but still wisps freed themselves and stuck to her forehead, distracting always when she needed to pay close attention to avoid losing an arm from the great sweeps of the sword. She needed to do this, she couldn’t let Buffy down. As she looked her opponent in the eye, she hoped she wouldn’t have to.

“Did I mention that Giles called?” Buffy remarked as the sword she wielded casually swept back towards Tara.

“No. What did he say?” Tara barely managed to swing the axe back around, blocking the sword badly with her axe’s shaft. It barely had any force to it, but Buffy dutifully allowed herself to be blocked and moved her sword back to the next attack in the drill pattern.

“He spent the first five minutes apologizing for not reaching me on my birthday until I told him that the house had been magically sealed off. Then I spent the next five minutes convincing him that I was positive that…” Buffy’s voice wandered off, as if deciding how often she could say the name.

“...a demon acquaintance of Anya was responsible.” Tara could see she had said the right thing by the thankful smile that stole across Buffy’s face. She wondered how she and everyone had missed how rare an event that had become. Everyone had been traveling in their own worlds so much that they had lost sight, even Tara herself.

She wondered if she should make a point of getting involved with Anya and Xander’s wedding plans. They seemed to have it well in hand, but that is what everyone still thought about Buffy.

Her distracted musings almost got her cut by another gentle sweep of Buffy’s sword, but her body responded to the pattern that Buffy had already drilled into her over the past hour and managed to block it. She felt a small thrill at successfully defending herself, a rarely felt sensation.

This had been Buffy’s idea, actually. Every since Buffy confessed her... relationship with Spike, Tara had been spending time with Buffy, separate from Dawn. But Tara wasn’t comfortable about stopping by the house and Buffy was uncomfortable about asking her to. She sensed that her presence at Buffy’s birthday party was the result of careful tiptoeing, whispered conversations and over-enthusiastic agreements.

So Buffy when had carefully and casually suggested working out with Tara, she gratefully took the excuse to meet Buffy regularly without having to worry about the awkwardness of stopping by the house.

Importantly, the only other alternative they discussed involved shopping. Tara knew that her dress style and fashion sense so outraged Buffy on a spiritual level that a trip to the mall would ultimately be far more terrifying for her than merely sparring in the Magic Shop’s workout room.

Willow was next to Dawn, half working on her assignments and trying to keep an eye on Dawn’s work, promising herself she would only butt in if Dawn got stuck. She was trying not to be too pushy Dawn. Willow hadn't realized just how much Dawn's image of her had been part of her and Tara's coupledom and the whole car crash had sort of evaporated the rest of Willow's individual coolness with Dawn. She could feel that she was getting some of her rope back from Dawn but knew it was still very short. Willow didn't know how to be without knowing what Dawn felt.

Anya was locking up the Magic Shop for the evening, she opened the door to the workout room in the back for a moment to flip on the newly installed alarm system, scowling at the blissfully unaware Dawn as she did so. In that moment the sound of steel on steel rang until the soundproofed (mostly) door swung shut. Willow started, immediately thinking of enforcing a layered magical defense so that can research can be done. A few moments of indecision as she forced back the instinctive invocation of a nearby hearth spirit to erect it as both the sprawled back Spike and Dawn looked at her. Their casualness reassured her that nothing really unexpected was happening. She was oddly disappointed, the sudden need for casting now buzzing under her eyelids.

"Buffy practicing with Xander?" Wonder if she should be hurt that no one had mentioned that Xander was here. Usually when Anya such speed in closing, with her already making a beeline out the door, that meant Anya was running late for her early evening quickie with Xander. Willow thought she was regaining enough trust for something as simple...

"Nope." Dawn looked from Spike's slightly smirking face to Willow's, rebelled against him and with a look of a parent deciding to gift a child a toy that they had been pestering about...

"Buffy is practicing with Tara...."

Willow didn't really hear anything after the name.

Tara, tara, TARA, Tara

She knew she could repeat the name for hours (and had) but was still amazed it never sounded the same.

"Oh"

....

"That's nice"

Oh, she wasn't fooling anybody. Spike's stock smirk grew but he seemed to be waiting, refraining from distractions. Dawn waiting to see if Willow did anything, with a suspicious glare, as if already regretting the gift.

Still. Calm into stillness.

…hold and caress and cry until everything goes away and safe and loved and...

Dawn was testing her, in her eyes an audit in progress.

Tara was just on the other side of the door.

And far further away.

Physics theorem: Light travels between two points in the shortest amount of time, not distance.

Brightly, "I'm glad Buffy has someone to practice with." And with that she turned back to her book, trying to focus on the page but the page proving elusive, a daze of no focus, straining instead to hear what noises that escaped from the next room (none, why none? So now the soundproofing seems to work?) Spike's snort of disbelief was immediate but it took long seconds for Willow to hear Dawn turning the pages of her text.

Give it another moment, Willow fidgeted in her seat and settled back down, to get more comfy of course, but wow, the door to the back room now happens to be in sight. One has to make sacrifices (No sacrifices! No forfeitures!)

Did Tara like this shirt?

When was the last time I cut my hair? Tara loves to run her hand through my hair.

I'm not wearing a bra! Will that say available and waiting or hello, I’m a slut, just want anyone to feel, touch me.

I just want her to touch me.

Oh, casual talk! Umm, weather? No, too cliché. Buffy’s weapon's practice? That’ll be short, that’s a sharp piece of metal you have there! School, maybe, but no pushiness. Hacking the registrar to find out Tara’s schedule wasn't pushy, or stalkery, was it?

And for the first time in days, Willow stopped thinking about magic.

Well, for the next two minutes at least.

This is good.

Well, I have an unusual advantage. I didn't touch (or even see) this for 5-6 years, so I am able to edit (and thus improve) this with almost an entirely impartial eye...