Willow's Head by Chris Cook

Rating: PG
Uber Setting: Herman's Head
Disclaimer: Based on characters from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon, and the TV show Herman's Head, created by Andy Guerdat and Steve Krienberg.
Distribution: Through the Looking Glass http://alia.customer.netspace.net.au/glass.htm
The Mystic Muse http://mysticmuse.net
Feedback: Hell yeah!
Pairing: Willow/Tara

Summary: A peek inside the hectic mind of Willow Rosenberg.

Willow Rosenberg sat as inconspicuously as possible in a faded old lounge chair, kept her newspaper at roughly eye-level in front of her, and tried not to stare too obviously at the blonde sitting across from her. Around them the staff common room of the school was abuzz with activity, as the other teachers did their best to fill up on coffee and conversation during the brief morning recess. Normally Willow would have been among them, busy as ever with her mind already on the next period's science class.

Just talk to her, she told herself. She's new here, go say 'hi', it's the friendly thing to do. Practically everyone else in the room has said hi. She took a deep, steadying breath. You already said hi earlier, when she walked past while you were opening up the lab. Remember? When she gave that little smile and a soft-voiced 'hello' and you went and fell head-over- heels? A wistful smile crossed her features. So if you keep saying hi, you're going to seem like some scary stalker lady obsessed with her! A worried frown creased her brow. You are obsessed with her, she reminded herself. Yes, but in a good way, in a 'you're beautiful and I'd love to get to know you' way, not a 'break out the telescopic lens camera' way.

Willow had heard, at one of those team-building seminars the teaching staff got sent to every now and then where they did 'trust exercises', that everyone's mind was divided between competing impulses. The speaker hadn't really thought the concept through, other than as a way to introduce the notion that they should all fall over backwards and hope their partner would catch them – which was not a good idea, as Willow's assigned partner that day had been the P.E. teacher, who she'd have been lucky to avoid being crushed by if he fell towards her – but the idea stuck in her mind. Often, like now, it seemed to have some merit, as her thoughts whirled back and forth, arguing and counter- arguing endlessly before reaching something approximating a decision.

"Talking to the woman a second time in one day does not in itself constitute stalking," Giles insisted.

"You're paranoid," Anya interjected, "face it, we couldn't be scary if we wanted to."

"We will be if we let you have control of the vocal chords," Buffy snapped. "Xander, back me up here – we need to bide our time, right?"

"We're not just attracted to her because of her 'boob-'," Giles pointed out, clearly uncomfortable even saying the word, "her physical qualities."

"I am," Xander insisted, not taking his eyes off the view, "you handle the respect for her mind and enjoying her conversation-"

"Do you ever think about anything else?" Buffy asked. "All you do, every waking moment of every day, is appreciate everyone's good looks! Which, for your information, is called being a perv."

"Not true," Xander rounded on her, "I've never once thought sexy thoughts about Maggie Walsh."

"EW!" the other three said in unison, as Willow's imagination furnished an image of the stern head of the mathematics department.

Willow paused in the act of taking a sip of coffee, and wondered why on earth, in the middle of musing about whether or not to talk to Tara Maclay, the idea of Professor Walsh had popped into her head.

The inner workings of Willow's mind resembled something Jules Verne might have built, had he had the annual budget of the Pentagon. Valves and gauges lined the walls, hydraulic pipes and pressure conduits ran this way and that, and these was a general impression of intricate activity going on in the brass-plated gadgetry that constituted the automatic processes of her psyche. A complicated arrangement resembling a television screen mounted inside a periscope set among the dials and levers showed a close-up of the newspaper Willow had just turned her attention back to, while the imagination – a strange collection of light bulbs and brass work that lowered from a hatch in the ceiling like a chandelier – retracted, having delivered its mental image for the moment. On the other side of the room was the bulging filing cabinet of long-term memory, next to the desk where the short-term memory was stored in an impressively large pile of notebooks.

Rupert Giles had been the librarian of Willow's school, from kindergarten right through to her final year. In terms of her academic life Giles had been her greatest influence, a source of guidance and wisdom when she was unsure of what course to pursue, kindness and support when she felt overwhelmed by the demands placed on her. His example had led her to a career in teaching. All things considered, it was no surprise that her Intellect had taken his form.

Buffy Summers, Xander Harris and Anya Jenkins had been fellow students – Buffy was now a triathlete, Xander a civil engineer, and Anya had finished a law degree, acquired a position at a respected firm, and looked set to one day realize her dream of being a judge. In Willow's mind, Buffy – who had always kept Willow firmly in the real world, when she seemed likely to get lost in some esoteric pursuit – was her Self-Analysis, the part of her that double-checked herself, that kept an eye peeled for trouble when her other impulses were in full flight, oblivious to anything but whatever they were focused on.

Anya was Ego, which, had Willow been aware of the forms her various impulses had taken, wouldn't have surprised her one bit. The real Anya was not a selfish person as such, but she had a directness about her that many mistook for the same thing, until they got to know her and realized that her utter lack of pretence was actually a mark of respect for those around her. In Willow's mind, Anya was the part that spoke exactly as she felt, and pursued exactly what she wanted.

When she finally mustered the courage to come out, Willow did so first to Xander, her oldest and dearest friend. He had taken it upon himself to ensure that Willow never felt uncomfortable about her sexual orientation, which, in his appraisal of the situation, meant spending time at the Bronze sharing their mutual admiration for the female of the species. Unsurprisingly, when Willow's Libido had something to add to any internal debate, Xander was the form it took.

"Look," Buffy was saying, while Xander glared up at the imagination and turned his attention back to the view of Tara on the periscope screen, stolen over the top of the newspaper, "it's simple. We can't just go up to her and say 'Hi, I'd love to wake up next to you tomorrow'-"

"Okay, granted," Buffy acknowledged, "but if we act like some hormone- charged teenager, she's probably not going to be inclined to grace us with that unique presence, is she?"

"Being friendly is not a turn-off," Anya said flatly. "Show of hands, who wants to go over and say a friendly 'hello', and see where it goes from there?" She raised her hand.

"I think that's a reasonable suggestion," Giles said, "so long as we keep our wits about us, there doesn't seem to be a great likelihood of such an encounter ending disastrously-"

"We're agreed," Anya said, "Buff, do your caution thing by all means, but we're making our move." She strode imperiously over to one of the control panels and pulled a lever marked 'legs'.

Her mind made up, Willow set aside her coffee mug and walked around the table to where Tara was sitting.

"Hi," she said, hoping she sounded casual – not too casual, she reminded herself, don't seem bored or disinterested – "how's things?"

Tara looked up at her, surprised for a split second, then smiled and gestured to the vacant space next to her on the couch.

"Yes!" all four impulses shouted in unison, as Anya pulled the lever to the 'sit down' position.

"Things are good," Tara said, her voice soft – and oh so melodious, Willow thought to herself – "my first classes went well." She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. Okay, Willow concluded, cutest thing ever, plus one. "Y-you're the science teacher, aren't you? Physics?"

Just then the ball rang the end of recess, and there was a general motion among the common room's inhabitants towards the door.

"Oh, I have a class," Tara said, standing up, "I have to go. Thanks for saying hi."

"Yeah, me too," Willow said, trying not to seem unduly disappointed. "Um, see you around." Tara joined the procession out the door, while Willow deposited her newspaper on the table and went to collect her coffee mug.

"If someone hadn't wasted all that time worrying," Anya complained, "we'd have had a good five minutes more to talk with her. We might have a date by now!"

"We did it right," Buffy insisted, "we were calm, we were friendly, we didn't scare her. Okay, we didn't get much talk-time, but we've laid some groundwork, we can proceed from here."

"We'd have laid much more groundwork if we'd had time to say more than a couple of words," Anya grumbled. She paused as a thought struck her. "Who was it who thought 'melodious', anyway?"

"She waved at us!" he insisted, staring at the screen where Tara was just vanishing through the doorway. "She turned in the doorway and smiled, and did this little wave!" He pointed excitedly to a gauge marked 'reciprocated affection', on which the needle was wavering in the high area.

"I think we may conclude," Giles intervened, "that both your opinions were valid components in what may be filed as a successful initial approach. Now we simply need to consider what our next step should be."

"Chocolate tastes good!" Anya protested. "Flowers just look pretty – and, before you say it, chocolate can also look pretty, if it's nicely-made. We'd be covering all our bases."

"It's too early for chocolate," Buffy argued, "unless it's her birthday or something like that, chocolate is an 'I want to date you' present."

"I know we do," Buffy sighed, "but as a first step, flowers are our best bet. Flowers say..." she paused and raised a hand, like an actor delivering a soliloquy, "joy, and contentment, and... and polite affection. And there's a whole range, we can move from happy brighten-up-your-day flowers, which won't bother her at all coming from a vague acquaintance and co- worker, to something more deliberate like roses once we're sure we're making the right moves."

"I'm always right," Buffy insisted, "that's my job, being the voice of reason."

"If you're right," Anya raised her voice to drown out Buffy, "I still think we should go with chocolates at an early stage. Okay, maybe not first thing, but soon – it'll show her we're not some bland, stereotypical creature with no originality. We're bold, we're daring-"

"-and we don't care who knows it!" Anya finished. "That kind of thing is romantic gold."

"I'm trying to concentrate," Giles pleaded, "we're in the middle of giving a chemistry lesson. Just this once, could you talk amongst yourselves and not distract me?"

"Exactly," Anya glared at Buffy, "this is a matter for the heart, not the head."

"Yeah?" Buffy shot back. "Well let's see what it's got to say, shall we?" She picked up an ornate speaking tube from amid the confusion of Willow's autonomic systems and spoke into it. "Heart? Got anything to say?"

"Eight hundred and seventy-six million four hundred and fifty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-two," a fast-speaking monotone voice echoed out of the tube, "eight hundred and seventy-six million four hundred and fifty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-three, eight hundred and seventy-six million-"

"Our heart," Buffy said, replacing the speaking tube, "has no particular opinion on the matter."

"You know," Xander said thoughtfully, "we could... ask her out... for coffee?" Buffy and Anya looked up at him, surprised, and even Giles glanced up from the notebook he was reading out of, titled 'Chemistry for eighth-grade students'.

"And not entirely related to nakedness," Buffy added. "How'd you come up with it?"

"Oh ye of little faith," Xander said reproachfully. Buffy and Anya simply stared at him, and he relented: "Okay, okay... coffee dates lead to real dates lead to hugs and cuddles lead to boobies... stop looking at me like that, it's what I'm here for!"

Willow finished drawing a molecular diagram on the whiteboard, and paused in the act of turning back to her class.

Suppressing a smile, she turned and asked, "Okay, who can tell me what's wrong with this boo- molecule?"

"Target sighted," Xander announced, steering the periscope screen like a submarine commander. The imagination dipped down out of the ceiling and projected a pair of cross-hair sights onto the view, making Xander jump in surprise.

"Okay guys, plan," Buffy insisted. "We can't just wing this, we'll get flustered and start babbling and end up talking about quantum physics, or frogs or something-"

"Please don't mention frogs," Giles said in a plaintive voice. One of the filing cabinets behind him emitted a noise something like a distant, echoing 'croak'.

"Right, no frogs," Anya agreed, shuddering. Her voice dropped to a whisper, "those creepy, floppy ears-"

"For the last time, that's bunnies," Giles insisted, "I'm our intellect, I know the difference between a bunny rabbit and... one of them."

"It's no use," Xander said, as Anya shook herself out of her unpleasant reverie, "she'll never get it."

"Just give me the vocal chords," Giles said, pulling a 1940s-style microphone from among the controls. "I'll handle this."

Frogs, Willow was thinking, bunnies... bunnies, frogs... why do I always mix that up?

"Um, hey," she said out loud, reaching Tara just as she was closing up the English classroom, the students having headed home for another day.

"I was wondering," Willow said, returning Tara's smile with a widening of her own, "seeing as we were talking before, admittedly not talking exactly – about to talk, when the bell rang, so, you know, in a state of talkiness which would've been realized as actual talking, but for random circumstances outside our control-"

"-would you maybe like to go out for coffee?" Willow regained control over her babble.

"Um," Tara said, pushing aside her slight bafflement at the tide of verbiage that had just flowed over her, "s-sure... do you know any good coffee places near here?"

"Oh yeah," Willow nodded enthusiastically, "I know 'em all – coffee's my thing. Well, not my only thing, I'm not one-dimensional or anything, it's not like-"

"Thank you," Anya said, turning her attention back to the conversation as Buffy and Xander physically lifted up Giles and carried him back to his corner of the room, Buffy with a hand over his mouth.

"-yeah, I do," Willow said. "There's a place just a down the block that does great mochas."

"Mochas, huh?" Tara replied, her lips quirking into a lop-sided grin, amusement making her eyes sparkle.

"I'd like that," Tara nodded, "I have to grab a couple of things from my desk... see you by the main doors in five minutes?"

"What're you doing over here?" Buffy asked, as Anya appeared beside her to help placate an irritated Giles, "who's running the conversation?"

"I handed it over to Xander," Anya said tersely, "we're just agreeing to coffee, he can handle it."

"Oh... so," Buffy tilted her head on one side, "how come we're just saying 'uh-huh' repeatedly?"

Xander was staring into the periscope screen, murmuring 'pretty smile' over and over. Buffy's eyes widened, and she leapt the short-term memory desk and made a grab for the microphone as it fell from his hand.

"I mean yeah!" Willow recovered. "Yep, okie-dokey. Five minutes. See you there."

"Hey, I'm self-analysis," Buffy defended herself, "I'm not good at improvising."

Five minutes later Willow waited by the school's main doors, distracting herself by watching the last few students hanging around the building's front lawn. One hand was idly playing with the hem of her shirt, though she hadn't yet realized this, or even that she had untucked that side of her shirt at all.

'She said yes!' she grinned to herself, 'She said yes, she said yes…yay for yesses. Yesses make everything better. Well, not everything, strictly speaking, but those things that involve me asking Tara out for coffee. As opposed to, say, "Hey, is that nuclear reactor safety gauge above the red line?", that's be no good if the answer was 'yes'. 'Cause what do I know about fixing a reactor? Nothing, that's what. Well, I know dropping the cadmium rods is a good idea if the reaction is getting out of hand, but you've got to figure the reactor maintenance-type people already tried that and it didn't work, if they've exhausted their options so far as to be asking visiting high school teachers for advice-"

"Why are we letting him just go on like that?" Xander asked Anya and Buffy, as Giles continued to talk breezily to himself.

'-not like it'd be a class field trip, there's not even any reactors in this state, and even if we got the budget for interstate field trips they wouldn't let school field trips go into the bits of the facility where they deal with unexpected meltdowns, they probably have shiny chrome control centers for that sort of stuff, not the kind of place you want someone like Natalie Mercer in seventh grade, or - oh goddess, Tristan Burke, he'd probably trip over the power cord to the main console or something. They must have back-ups, though? Oh face it, he's a klutz, he'd trip over all the cables all at once- "

"We have to say something impressive right now!" Giles yelled, making a dive for his notebooks.

"Did we check ourselves in a mirror?" Buffy countered. "Is our hair okay? Did we clean our nails after all that messing around with soil samples?"

"I'll handle it!" Xander declared, taking control of the voice, while swinging the screen around so he could see it. "Ooh, pretty smile..."

"...smile..." Willow replied, trying to sort her thoughts out. "I mean, yes! Hello, and yes, I'm ready."

"You're smiling," Willow pointed out, "smiling, ergo happy, which is a good thing…'cause hey, I wouldn't want to think going for a coffee with me is a bad thing, that'd be a bit of a blow to the old self-esteem, you see what I mean…I don't know what I mean. You startled me," she finished, with a mock frown.

"I did," Tara admitted, "not on purpose..." She chuckled slightly. "I don't think I've ever seen someone as deep in thought as you were."

"Yep, my thoughts," Willow nodded, her tone unmistakably sarcastic, "gotta love 'em."

"Who said that?" Giles, Xander, Anya and Buffy all glared at each other, each concealing a guilty start behind a look of indignation.

"Love…thoughts?" Buffy frowned. "Us? Did she just hint what I thought she just hinted?"

"She might," Buffy corrected, "conceivably, hypothetically, in a not very serious joking-around sense-"

"Indeed," Giles said, "but if I may suggest a course of action, we've been grinning in a rather silly fashion for several seconds now, so saying something might be in order?"

"Oh!" Willow said, realization dawning. "Oh, well…thanks! Yep…well sure, lots of conversation over coffee, I promise - you want my thoughts, you got 'em."

"Soitanly," Willow joked in a fake Mobster accent, for no good reason, "I just have to..." she waved a folder stuffed full of papers vaguely, then a worried frown crossed her face.

"She'll love it!" Anya insisted. "This is a woman who appreciates individuality, and says 'no' in no uncertain terms to the forces of soul-crushing conformism. She'll love the car."

"...just have to put these in my car," Willow finished, glancing apologetically at Tara as she took a few steps towards the car park.

"Of course," Tara nodded, following. Willow resisted the temptation to look over her shoulder as she opened her car with the remote on the keys and quickly dumped the folders on the passenger seat. Steeling herself, she turned around.

"We collectively don't want to hear whining from you right now!" Anya snapped. Buffy shook her head at the two, and remained silent.

"Is she smiling?" Buffy asked. "Is it a happy smile, or a gee-what-a-dumb-car smile? Please don't tell me we blew our chances by having a dumb car-"

"Look at her face!" Buffy, Anya and Giles said in unison. Xander cringed and adjusted the periscope.

"Nice car," Tara said. Willow bit her lip and ventured a sidelong glance as they fell into step together.

"Is that 'nice' meaning 'nice', or 'nice' meaning 'eccentric but I'm being diplomatic, and really just mentioning it as a way of getting the conversation going'?" she asked, all in one breath.

"Nice as in nice," Tara laughed. "Besides, who said there's anything wrong with being eccentric? I like eccentric."

"I am!" Willow grinned. "I mean, me too - I like eccentric. I am eccentric, in fact, and I like it. Which is good, because otherwise, I'd have issues, you know?" Tara laughed again.

Buffy studied two of an array of mercury-filled tubes, somewhat resembling thermometers, among the clutter of Willow's mind. The one marked 'embarrassment from babbling' wavered around half-way up, while on another panel one with a hastily- handwritten sign declaring it 'giddy feelings from Tara's laugh' had broken its top and was bubbling silver liquid down the wall.

Willow and Tara sat side by side on one of the Caffeine Drip's comfy, slightly-worn sofas and sipped their mochas. In unison they closed their eyes, leaned back a fraction, took a slow, quiet breath, swallowed, and sighed. Willow peeked at Tara, who peeked at Willow, and they giggled at each other.

"You can accuse me of being insatiable," Tara smiled, blushing faintly, "but I'm in the mood for another sip."

"Beats rolling over and going to sleep," Willow agreed. They sipped, leaned, swallowed, and sighed again.

"Did we do it deliberately?" Giles asked Xander, while Anya and Buffy took turns with the microphone.

"Only the second time," Xander said. "It seemed funny…trust me, we can't go wrong if we're making her laugh. I know whereof I speak."

"Unless she happens to be laughing at us, choking on our coffee," Giles warned darkly, glancing at the girls.

"I'm fine," Willow chuckled, taking a deep breath. "My lungs heard from my stomach how good the coffee was, and wanted to try some for themselves - you know how they get, pesky lungs, all pushy just because they're a major organ. I mean," she went on, as Tara giggled, "if your big toe, for instance, wanted some coffee, I bet the stomach would just be 'eh, whatever, later', and forget all about it. Poor big toe, it must be tough being an appendage. All the work, none of the glory. Except opposable thumbs, they're like the appendage diva, getting all the credit for all of human civilization. I bet the other fingers are jealous, it's not like a thumb on its own could do anything, it needs fingers to grip against..."

"I didn't want to stop a good thing," Tara smiled. "Do your thoughts always rush around like that?"

"Damn metaphorical imagery," Xander complained, looking down to find himself clad in a track athlete's shorts - very tight shorts - and singlet - likewise. He looked up to see Anya similarly attired.

"Oh yeah," he nodded approvingly. A disgruntled sigh caught his attention, and he turned to look at Giles.

"Oh yeah," Willow nodded, putting the sudden twitch in her leg down to having been standing up in class all day. "You know how people say they'd lose their head if it wasn't nailed on? Mine needed extra nails to keep it down." She paused. "And thinking of Frankenstein's monster now, not such a great image."

"I'm surprised your hair is still its original color," Tara quipped. "It seems like it should have left its original spectrum."

"I could dye my hair and claim it blue-shifted over night," Willow agreed with a laugh. "Though, it'd be relative - I mean, for example, blue shifts only occur in an object moving away from the observer, so you, for instance, would see a red shift, possibly into infra-red. Being that my thoughts are directed at you. Get it?" she asked hopefully. Tara laughed out loud and nodded.

"Do you make your classes this much fun?" she asked, catching her breath. Willow shrugged modestly.

"I'd like to think so, but I think what teachers think is fun will never correspond to what students think is fun - it's a fundamental law of the universe, or something. I could try dyeing my hair blue and see what they think?"

"I like your hair the way it is," Tara said, venturing a winsome smile, which as far as Willow was concerned, won hands down.

"Then red it stays," she agreed. "I don't think blue hair works anyway, except in cartoons."

"Oh god, don't let him start up about the cartoons," Buffy moaned in dismay, as Xander pulled up an armchair by the microphone and got ready to prose at length.

"Saturday morning cartoons were bonding time for my brother and I," Tara said. "Though to tell the truth, I preferred Transformers."

"On the positive side," Giles noted, as he, Anya and Buffy sat around the desk, "we appear to have things in common with the lady in question, which is unarguably a good thing. On the negative," he shot at glare at Xander, who was talking a mile a minute, "we may be here for days."

"But Jetfire was imported from the Robotech line anyway," he went on, unperturbed. "Anyway it's bases of operations that we should be looking at, and the SDF-1 would turn Metroplex into scrap metal..."

"Why the heck is it that he always takes over when we discuss this sort of thing?" Buffy wondered. "I've checked our endorphin levels, I know for a fact Robotech does not turn us on…how come Libido goes nuts about it?"

"Technically he's not a boy," Buffy pointed out. "We're all a girl, remember? Even you," she added to Giles, and then grimaced at the thought.

"So?" Anya repeated her shrug, with an extra touch of dismissive. "Technically we're not talking about toys - dad never bought us that robot plane, or whatever it was-"

"VF-1S Valkyrie," Xander said over his shoulder, before turning back to the conversation he was conducting for Willow and continuing: "Sure it couldn't take Unicron, but it's hardly fair to compare a capital ship to a god..."

"See?!" Buffy protested. "Two conversations at once! Normally he can't even think about two body parts at once - how the hell is he doing that?!?"

As the afternoon moved toward evening the conversation moved on, through work (Giles, with a side of Anya), hobbies (mainly Anya, with Buffy keeping Xander from saying anything risqué), and somehow on to most embarrassing high school moments (Buffy's fifteen minutes of fame). Giles heaved a sigh of relief and ticked off 'gay' on his list of 'necessary qualities for furthering our relationship' when Tara mentioned her coming out as one of hers, while Xander did a happy dance perilously close to the levers controlling Willow's legs, almost causing her to happy dance along.

"Sorry," she said, having nearly overbalanced the teacup balanced on her knees, "I was just having a spaz moment there. Promise not to tell my students?"

"If you promise not to tell mine the story I just told you," Tara grinned, with shyness and flirtation meeting on her face at a point marked 'adorable'.

"Your amateur theatre secrets are safe with me," Willow promised. "Though, I must say, I bet you made a great songbird."

"You're not just saying that because it involved a one-piece swimsuit and a pair of tights as my entire costume?" Tara teased.

"Sorry," Tara dropped her gaze and let her hair fall across her face. "Just teasing…I think all this school reminiscing has mentally taken a few years off me, I couldn't help myself..."

"We don't want to appear crude," Giles cautioned. "Just because she mentioned a certain costume-"

"You're drooling on the blush regulator!" Buffy pointed out. "Our face is going critical."

"-it doesn't necessarily follow that her humorous reference was directed towards its, ah, visually appealing qualities - she may have simply been making a joke at her expense, indicating the embarrassment she felt while wearing it-"

"What if we were to reassure her that it's the sexiest thought we'd ever had?" Xander offered.

"No!" Buffy silenced him. "We're not doing anything that results in her running away and filing sexual harassment charges at work in the morning!"

"We have to flirt back somehow!" Anya insisted. "If we just sit here dumbly she'll get discouraged-"

"Oh- I didn't realize how late it had gotten," Tara said, having glanced idly at her watch. "I should…not that I'm trying to get out of here, but I haven't got anything ready for dinner. Come to think of it, I haven't bought anything for dinner yet, I'm still unpacking and living off take-out." She flashed Willow a shy smile.

"Now she's leaving!" Giles, Anya and Buffy shouted accusingly at each other. Unseen, Xander scooped up the microphone.

"If you don't have plans," Willow suggested, "and if you're not tired of my company…I know a place? I wasn't really looking forward to a home-cooked meal anyway, which, if you knew my cooking, you'd understand. Can I interest you?"

"I-I'd have to go back to my apartment," she said. "I should change, and I've got some laundry to put in the machine…but," she looked up, and gave a hopeful smile, "if you'd like to pick me up around eight...?"

"I have my moments," Xander said modestly, leaning over and pushing the 'agree' button on Willow's preset responses.

"Woo-hoo!" Anya, Xander and Buffy chorused. Anya then glared at Giles and elbowed him in the stomach.

"It's not that I don't share the sentiment," he protested plaintively, "I simply choose not to express it in such an…undignified manner..." He looked around, and shrunk under the withering glare of the rest of Willow's psyche.

Forty minutes later Willow stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, rapidly whirling the items of clothing laid out on the bed over her body and checking herself. She studied a thin red sweater for a moment, then discarded in favor of a black spaghetti-strap top, which she seemed satisfied with for all of one and a half seconds, before dropping it and returning to the wardrobe to further empty it.

"Why not a skirt?" Xander countered. "What's with the covering of the legs, if they're so good?"

"Great work," Anya sniped at Buffy. "As if we weren't distracted enough already."

"Like you said, we're having dinner," Anya argued. "Not, in this case, trying to get ourselves adopted from the pound. Cute is-"

"Whoa, what?" Xander blinked, rejoining the debate. "What's wrong with being adopted? I'm all for us being adopted by Tara."

"I think they do checks for mental instability before they give you a pet," Buffy huffed.

"People!" Anya shouted. "Focus! We're not a pet, and we're not trying to get Tara to take us home and put a collar on us! Now could we just-" She broke off as Xander lost consciousness and collapsed, with an enormous grin on his face.

"Great work," Buffy said, false-chirpily. "As if we weren't distracted enough already."

Willow finally arrived at Tara's building, in grey jeans and a long-sleeved green shirt that had been the only survivors of a detailed process of elimination, and checked her watch.

"We said eight o'clock, so we'll arrive at eight o'clock," Giles insisted calmly, fending her away from the levers for Willow's hands.

After two minutes of pacing and watch-checking, Willow finally gave herself the go- ahead to push the buzzer, and pushed it. It was an old brick building, two stories comprising four apartments in total, and there wasn't an intercom that Willow could spot. She waited patiently, forcing her face into a casual smile, as a light came on in the stairwell vaguely visible behind the door's frosted glass, and footsteps descended.

"Hi," she said as the door opened, hoping not to sound too cheerful, to the point of undue eagerness. "Are you rehuh muh guh?"

Tara, leaning casually against the doorframe, dressed in a long, flowing blue skirt that was tight in all the right places around her thighs and hips, and a loose sleeveless navy top, raised both eyebrows in confusion.

"I mean, are you ready to go?" Willow corrected herself. "There's no hurry, I can wait..."

"No," Tara shook her head, resuming her smile. "No need, I'm ready." A noise from behind her startled her, and she glanced over her shoulder.

"Oh," she grinned, turning back to Willow, "They're redecorating the apartment opposite me upstairs…some couch dodging may be required." She and Willow moved into the corner out of the way as a man and a teenage boy came lumbering down the stairs, carrying a heavy sofa between them, and staggered through the narrow doorway.

"No problem," Tara said with a polite smile. Willow offered a smile as well, then turned back to Tara to say something, which she completely forgot.

"Oh my god!" Anya exclaimed. "She…us…confined space! We're this close to her!"

"That's okay, just keep him away from anything vital," Anya waved a hand vaguely at him.

"So..." Tara shrugged, taking a deep breath. She and Willow were standing very close in the wake of the couch's passage, and neither was moving away.

"Uh, yeah..." Willow nodded slowly. "The car's outside…I guess, we should…go?"

"Yeah," Tara agreed, her gaze flickering up and down between Willow's eyes and her lips.

"Xander what are you doing?" Buffy asked, as he reached for a button marked 'peck on cheek'.

"We are getting signals," he said definitively. "They are strong signals, and we are responding. Stand back!" Nervous emergency lights flashed on as Xander picked up a mallet, broke the glass over the button, and pressed it.

Tara blinked as Willow leaned forward the fraction that was required and brushed her lips against her cheek. It was over as quick as that - Willow was leaning away again, not quite able to meet her eyes, before she had even realized what had happened. Tara put a hand on her cheek, where she felt the memory of Willow's lips, and stared at her, mouth hanging open in surprise.

"I-I'm sorry," Willow stammered. "I thought…that was totally wrong, I'm so sorry I don't know what happened, I'll go, if you want, I didn't mean anything and I promise I'll- "

The inside of Tara's mind had the appearance of a Renaissance artisan's workshop - stone walls, polished hardwood floor, Tuscan sunlight streaming in through shuttered windows, oil lamps here and there, and every surface piled high with manuscripts, old leather-bound books, sketches, spare canvasses, paintings, and models of wood, string and cloth.

From behind an easel bearing a portrait of Willow, Tara's libido crept out, hefted a heavy illuminated manuscript above her, and smacked her pessimistic self-analysis over the head with it.

"Want? Take. Have," she said, dropping the book on a table as her rival collapsed dazed to the floor.

Tara leaned forward, cupped Willow's face in her hands, and kissed her babbling mouth firmly. Willow's eyes went wide as saucers, then slowly closed as the kiss lingered on, as Tara, while her mouth remained closed for now, made no secret of the pleasure it gave her to savor Willow's lips.

The Jules-Verne-mission-control and the artist's studio merged together in a bewildering mix of styles, leaving the components of Willow and Tara's psyches staring at each other across the meld between their two worlds.

"Hi," Tara's libido said, stepping forward, pointing to herself. "Faith, Larry, Jenny Calendar," she gestured to the others around herself, "and the one taking a time-out is Donnie. We're Tara."

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Willow's Head

by Chris Cook

Copyright © 2005

alia@netspace.net.au