Author: JustSkipIt
Feedback: Yes, please. Please leave feedback on the Willtaralympics 2007 thread on the Kitten Board.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: This fic is not meant to imply that Buffy has any sensitivity or empathy or thinks of anyone but herself. Let's all keep in mind that it's AU. That said, any similarities between these folks and the creations of Joss Whedon and the Buffyverse are not coincidental. I own none of them and I'd try and return at least Anya and Riley to the store for full refund or perhaps store credit if I did.

I am so glad that Willow was able to come home from her business trip early and help me get this all set up. And she was just, "What are best friends for, Buff?" She was in a great mood although she decided to tease me: "You can pay me back very soon." I know I was smiling because she got serious. "But not by setting me up, Buffy. I've had enough of blind dates from you and Dawn. Arggghhh! That last girl? I wouldn't wish her on Anya."

I guess I'll have to be a sneaky Slayer. "Ok, Will. I got the message when you called me from the bathroom of the restaurant begging me to come get you with an 'emergency.'"

She nodded and shook the carrot stick she was peeling at me like a stake. "That's right. Next time I'm just leaving and you can stay for the rest of the date."

I held up my hands. "I surrender. Now put down the carrot sticks and back away slowly." She smiled. "Or at least arrange them in some kind of a pattern." I reached behind me and grabbed the other bags, pushing the celery, cucumber, red bell peppers, and broccoli toward her. The timer on the oven buzzed and I looked around for a hot mitt which she handed me. "Why didn't I have this catered?"

"Because, and I quote, 'mom wouldn't cater this. She would make everything from scratch including the cake.'"

I pulled out the cookie sheets, set them on the stovetop, and was nodding my head when the back door opened and in came Xander loaded down with a cooler and the cake on top. "man with cake coming through." I was turning back to grab the cake which looked like it was going to slide off the cooler but Willow got there first so I took the cooler. Xander was rubbing his back and I smiled at him and he straightened up. You would think that after all these years, he would just accept that he's a weak little man while I am the big bad Slayer but he's still embarrassed about it. He ran out to the truck to get another cooler and then we checked that he had brought everything he was supposed to have while Willow went on cutting and arranging. She finished the crudités and started on some little sandwiches which the online planner said we had to have. I'm not exactly an expert on throwing wedding showers.

"Have any of the guests shown up yet?"

Xander is far from the most subtle person I know and Willow gave him a curious look before smarting off. "Well, the shower starts in an hour and a half so strangely they haven't arrived. Imagine."

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow but thankfully he didn't give anything away. It's not like I need to hear chapter and verse of the "my life is complete. I'm happy as I am and I don't need a girlfriend" riff from Willow just before Dawn's wedding shower. Not to mention Xander's standard, "Anya and I have been married for three years and it's just as fresh and wonderful as ever..." blah, blah, blah... God. I'm so lucky that everyone leaves me alone about it all. I just play that "Angel was my one true love" sob, sob, sob card and they back off. I guess killing your lover when you're seventeen can have its payoffs even if he does return.

Nonetheless, and blind date after blind date notwithstanding, Dawn swears that this is the one. She's been telling me so much about Tara for the past three months I swear I could be dating her. She's Willow's type. They have so much in common. She has the same strange sense of humor as our Willow. She's single too. She's gay too (well duh. That's a good one). She claims she doesn't need a relationship. Blah, blah, blah. I've never noticed that finding two people who share an aversion to serious relationships is a major boon for matchmaking but Dawn's convinced it's going to work out for them.

Xander finished his lugging and toting and gave us both hugs and headed out. He teased Willow that maybe she'd rather go to the "gentlemen's club" with the guys but she smacked him on the arm and told him to visit "if not hell, a hell-like dimension." Not much later we were all set with the food ready and cups, drinks, etc. all out in the living room. The decorations do look pretty good if I do say so myself and if it's cheating to pay Spike and Clem $50 to hang streamers while I slept after patrol, I can live with that.

Will declared it all good and looked at the time before running upstairs for a quick shower and change. I changed but didn't shower so that I could answer the door in case anyone was early. Willow had just finished dressing when Dawn arrived and we all shared hugs all around. I can't believe my baby sister is getting married. I mean. Hasn't she ever heard of living together? Incredibly she's hinted that she'll be fully eligible to wear white as she walks down the aisle and I can't decide whether to be impressed or a little dismayed over it. In cases like that, I find it best not to think about it.

Soon enough there was plenty else to do as the doorbell started ringing and friends of Dawn's from high school and college started showing up. I probably didn't know half of the women so I was really grateful that Willow and Anya were both there. I spotted this Tara woman right off. It wasn't that she was all large with the butch so much but she kind of gave off an air that if there had been men present, she would have been the most not interested person in any room. She was very pretty with light brown or maybe dark blonde hair and blue eyes and a fantastic tan. After she came in, I glanced over at Willow but I couldn't tell that she had noticed her at all.

And what was Will doing? She was being quite the back-up hostess-taking jackets and handing people drinks and asking where they knew Dawn from. I did the same and barely even noticed her handing Tara a drink over the corner of my eye. I couldn't tell if there was a "spark" as Dawn swore they would have. It looked more like the standard. "Punch?" "Yes, please." "Here you go..." "Thanks..." interaction but maybe they were already madly in love. What do I know about it?

For that matter, how is either of them even going to know that Dawn, ok we, are setting them up? I mean do they have a secret handshake or something so that they'll know that the other is gay? Or single? Or interested? Neither of them is wearing a rainbow choker or bracelet or anything that it seems like Willow breaks out every time she decides she's ready to date again.

But maybe that secret handshake was working because I noticed Willow laughing after she handed Tara the drink and then I swear Tara kind of touched the back of Willow's hand. Maybe I'm making it all up.

Ok. There's no way I'm making up Tara going back over to talk to Willow when her cup was empty. I mean. Hello, big bowl of punch with a dipper in it right there on the table! But instead she walked over to Willow and handed her the empty cup with a smile. And Willow just kind of stood there holding the cup and smiling back. She must have said something funny because Tara was laughing and then she reached out and ran her fingertip along Willow's arm. Is that flirting?

I kind of felt guilty that I was watching them when Willow broke apart from Tara to come to talk to me. She was smiling and still looked like she was giggling to herself and I had to restrain myself from saying something. "Hey, Buff. Are we going to play those games?"

Oh great. I was so busy thinking about potential coffee, kisses, and gay love that I had totally forgotten that I'm running a wedding shower. I called everyone together and Willow jumped to take their empty plates and forks to the garbage and refill punch cups. And it didn't escape my notice at all that Tara was the first guest to offer to help. "You'll need more hands," indeed. I may not have the greatest gaydar but they were definitely sharing little smiles and touching hands more often than they needed to.

The shower games were somewhat less lame than the usual and I have to attribute that to Anya. She did some online searching and called Hallie and a few other friends, both human and not-so, for some ideas. I rejected the ones that involved eating larvae of any kind or drawing entrails but the remaining ones were very fun. And who could help but notice that when guests paired up with streamers to create veils for our faux-wedding dress fashion show, Tara and Willow found each other immediately? We could hardly break them away from their efforts to get Willow to model them and I swear I thought Tara would kiss her right then and there when she was pinning the "veil" on Willow's head. Not to mention their bizarre fashion sense. I know it was just a streamer wedding veil but they somehow managed to create a brown and orange plaid. It looked like someone went hunting and shot a couch.

Now I have to admit something and it doesn't make me all that proud. Well, Tara's an archaeologist and Willow's what, a physicist? And me, marketing specialist, right? By my estimate, ½ of the things Tara said went right over my head. Willow found quite a few of them funny and a few of the other women laughed but I found that I didn't have much of an idea what she was talking about. She said something about an insect reflection or something that had Willow nearly rolling on the floor and I wasn't even sure what she had said.

So the two gay apparent geeks at the shower won that round and then started on building the best wedding cake out of whipped cream, a paper plate, and colored sprinkles. Every time one of them got a little cream on her finger, she kind of sucked it slowly while the other watched. I'm pretty sure that if they had just dropped to the floor and started spraying the stuff on each other and licking it off directly no one would have batted an eye at that point. But they continued with this charade attempting respectability. Two of Dawn's friends from medical school won the "cake decorating" contest and I cut the games short before we could get to the game to guess which of the "something borrowed, something blue..." blindfolded experiment. I mean setting up my best friend and Tara is one thing but I wasn't sure we all need to see what they're going to do with blindfolds? And I comfort myself that at least part of society will thank me for it. Ok, not the Xander part, but probably quite a few people.

I announced that it was time to open presents and Willow asked if anyone needed a drink or anything from the kitchen and who volunteered to lend a hand? Tara. Big surprise. Huge surprise. They went to get more ice for the ice bucket (together, wtf?) and were gone for like three minutes.

To the kitchen.

The present pile was huge so Dawn sat on the couch and someone started handing her gifts. I was supposed to write them all down for her which, luckily, someone told me because I would never have thought of it. I guess it keeps you from sitting there going, "Did Julie get me the coffee maker or table linens?" when you're writing all those thank you notes. She got a pretty good pile of loot which makes sense since so many of her friends are doctors and lawyers. Willow was practically salivating over the two coffee grinders, expresso machine, mocha machine, coffee machine with auto start and shut off, and all the rest of the coffee-related gadgets.

And I have to give Tara props for her gift. Or gifts. She handed Dawn the boxes herself and explained that she wasn't sure whether to get something mundane or spicy and since she was on a dig, with no phone, she decided to get both. And again I say props to her. Sheets? Cream sheets even 500 thread count are pretty mundane. And the spicy part? I hesitate to call it lingerie. It was more like something that Faith would have rejected as too revealing if she danced in a strip club.

Which is not to say that I spend any time thinking about Faith dressed like that or dancing in a strip club.

Willow looked like she was picturing Tara in that lingerie and I seriously considered dumping the punch bowl on her head to cool her down. She asked Tara some question about how she had picked it out and had she tried anything on but, thankfully, Tara got shy. At least the entire party wasn't exposed to that conversation. I can handle a lot of graphic violence but I'm not sure that I need that much detail on my best friend's sex life.

The party wrapped up with people leaving and hugging and kissing cheeks and all that. I just wanted to fall into the couch and sleep for about 11 hours but of course we needed to do some cleanup. Hey, we had extra help though. Tara declared that she didn't have any pressing need to go hang out at the hotel pool and she'd love to help us out.

I bet.

It's going to sound damn anticlimactic (not so much for them) when I say that at some point, I lost track of both Willow and Tara and that when I went upstairs to change out of my stylish yet affordable boots, I nearly collided with them. Not that they would have noticed. Tara had Willow pushed up against the wall and was... well I'm not entirely sure what they were doing although it certainly fell under the category of kisses and gay love. And I had no intention of staying around to find out. I grabbed my other shoes and slid along the wall back to the stairs without their noticing (thank God for Slayer stealth or maybe I could have driven a Zamboni down the hall without their noticing). Dawn, Anya, and I shared high-fives all around and agreed that we should head out for dinner without inviting the new couple along.