Title:  Resistance is Useless

Author:  Miss Murchison

Rating: PG 

Disclaimer:  All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc.  Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.

Setting:  Late Season 6

Notes:   Anya and I both wanted to see Tara in a sexy red negligée.  Written for Valentine's Day and dedicated to Keswindhover.  This would never have been completed on time without the assistance of the divine revdorothyl, who wrote several passages to get me writing again when I was completely blocked.

 

Tara clutched her soy latte and looked around that outpost of commercialized multi-culturalism known as the mall food court. Wisdom said she should be seeking a means of escape. It had seemed like a necessary courtesy to say "hello" to the woebegone figure sitting between the Asian pizza outlet and the make-your-own-sushi stand, but she was starting to worry that she'd gotten sucked into something much scarier than a Thai burrito or a haggis calzone.

"So you're not just here having lunch?" Tara asked, against her own better judgment. She couldn't help herself. The other woman was so obviously miserable.

Anya poked the paper plate in front of her. "As if I'd come here to eat over-priced and tasteless Mongolian pizza when much more appetizing versions are available for a lower price at the family-run restaurant near my apartment. I'm here on business."

"Magic Box business?"

"No." Anya looked despondent, then guilty, then despondent again. Finally she blurted out in a stage whisper, "Vengeance demon business."

Tara pulled away. "Ven—then you've gone back to, to—?"

Anya nodded, wiping a stray tear away from her cheek. "I decided all this humanity was just making me miserable, so I'd become a carefree demon again." Her voice quavered and she failed to choke back a sob. "I've got my power center back, and I'm an evil force to be reckoned with."

She looked so tragic that instead of recoiling in horror and casting a protection spell, Tara offered her a paper napkin to use as a hankie.

Anya blew her nose loudly and went on, "Halfrek came by to have a mocha and tell me every demon in Sunnydale knows I'm doing a terrible job. So here I am, crying into my strawberry chai before my next case even shows up."

"I'm sure it's not that bad," said Tara, even though she knew that words of encouragement to an evil demon made no sense at all. But Anya looked so very wretched.

"Yes it is," Anya folded the napkin, seeking a dry spot to use to wipe her cheeks. "Or, rather, I'm not. Not bad. I've gone soft. I've been letting even the worst philanderers off with really bad acne or chronic halitosis. I've only had one decent case since I've been back on the job. And that was this old biker, who'd started straying after he got a Viagra prescription. His wife said he was a fat boy, a big bore, and just a pig in general, so I turned him into a real hog. The Harley-Davidson of her dreams, in fact, and she rode off on him with her new boyfriend."

"Well, then," said Tara weakly.

Anya shook her head. "Halfrek just told me that he knew he was dying from some stupid disease and is thrilled to find himself spending the afterlife cruising the highways with lots of cuties wanting to ride him, so D'Hoffryn isn't giving me any points for transforming him. In fact, he's subtracting some. If I'm not really horrible to this next guy, I'm going to wind up as a snow tire in Minnesota or something equally uncomfortable." She dropped her head on the table. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't like hurting people any more!"

Tara thoughtfully moved the paper plate aside and wiped a stray glob of pizza sauce from Anya's carefully dyed blonde locks.

"I just want to go back to the Magic Box and work and be mad at Xander and not have anything to do with anyone else's stupid problems!" Anya wailed.

Tara patted Anya's hand and thought hard. "When I met you, D'Hoffryn wasn't after you. You got away from him once. How?"

"Giles broke my power center." Anya raised a tear-streaked face and pointed at the necklace she wore. "It left me powerless. D'Hoffryn only gave me a new one after Xander left me at the altar."

"Hmm, even I wondered why you would wear that necklace with an orange and green top." Tara reached out towards the charm, felt the power emanating from it, and pulled her hand back. "Can't you just return it?"

"Why, because a witch with no fashion sense thinks it doesn't go with my outfit?" Anya shook her head vigorously. "It's not that sort of a gift, and it didn't come with a return receipt." She stood up. "I need to wash my face before my appointment. No use making things worse by presenting an unprofessional appearance."

Tara watched Anya's slumped shoulders disappear in the direction of the ladies' room and sipped her coffee thoughtfully.

"Anya?"

Tara looked up to find a thin woman in her early thirties with red hair and too much makeup staring at her.

"No," said Tara, "But she'll be right back."

"Oh." The woman dropped into a chair across from Tara. "I'm Cindy. Are you her assistant?"

"Oh, no!" Tara hastened to assure the newcomer.

"Good," said the woman. "Because I don't want to be cruel, dear, but I wouldn't let someone with your bad dye job make me over. I assume you're another one of her clients?"

"Uh—"

"And why don't you make sure your sweater actually matches your eyes? Such a pretty feature, and you do your best to muddy the color, instead of enhancing it. Did you win a session too?"

"Uh—"

"Yes," said Anya, dropping into a chair next to Tara. "You've both won makeovers at the Naughty Nancy Sex Toy and Gardening Home Party Extravaganza. Tara was buying an electric hedge trimmer and you were there for something else with a buzz that could replace the guy who just dumped you. And now I'm going to show you both how to be ravishingly gorgeous, as impossible as that seems right now." She uttered all this in a monotone, with barely a glance at Cindy.

The newcomer bristled. "I hardly need a makeover, dear, and I'm not sure I want one from someone who's still mixing lime and tangerine." She fussed with the bags that surrounded her. "I've already made a few purchases. I'm only here because I was feeling very depressed about my husband leaving and I didn't want to brood."

"He was cheating on you, of course," said Anya with the air of someone who has heard the story far too many times. "I can hardly blame him, if you make a habit of wearing yellow chiffon."

Her tone did nothing to stop Cindy's flow of information. "He certainly was cheating! Ken went off with some floozy he met at the bowling alley. I'd like to bowl a strike that would take him out of the game permanently!" The woman took several deep breaths to calm herself.

"Yes, that's nice," said Anya in a distracted tone. She began muttering in a voice Tara could barely make out. "Maybe I can do something with that. Turn him into pins and let you mow him down? Let's get this guy's balls rolling, then." She marched out of the food court, leaving the other two to gather their belongings and scamper after her.

"What are you doing?" hissed Tara, catching up with Anya first.

"This is the way it works. She thinks I'm here for some stupid human reason, and then she tells me about her stupid ex-husband, blah, blah, blah, and then we see him, and I do something terrible when she makes a wish."

"But suppose it doesn't happen that way?"

"Oh, he'll be here. D'Hoffryn's set that up. Ken'll be along shortly, in perfect position to have his entrails shredded."

Tara grabbed Anya's arm, dragged them both out of the line of fire of a cologne-sprayer standing near a department store entrance, and halted in front of a table displaying half-priced handbags. "I mean, suppose you don't do something entrail-y."

"I have no choice. My power comes with certain compulsions. When Cindy wishes, I'll have to so something. And if it's not something really evil, it's my entrails that will be decorating that Orange Julius stand."

"Unless someone destroys your power center." Tara gestured towards the talisman around Anya's neck, being careful not to touch it.

Anya shook her head and started off down another arm of the sprawling octopus that was the Sunnydale Mall. "D'Hoffryn wouldn't believe I could be so careless again."

Tara followed her. "He'll believe it if we sell it right. We have to make him think it's been stolen and destroyed against your will. We just have to find someone powerful enough to do that."

You!" Anya grabbed Tara by the elbows and they froze next to a kiosk selling dancing hamster dolls. "I know you've got lots of power you never use. D'Hoffryn will believe you've got me in thrall or something. At least for the few seconds it will take to smash the power center."

"Hey, what's going on?" yelled Cindy, bustling up to them, her purse and shopping bags banging against her hip and shins. "Don't go so fast; I've got asthma, you know."

"I had to stop Tara here from buying those capris," said Anya, gesturing at a nearby shop. "She gets these crazy impulses, you know."

"Oh, dear," said Cindy staring at a mannequin's outfit in horror. "Poor thing. Not with your calves, sweetie. She really does need your help, Anya, honey."

"You have no idea how much polyester I've already banned from her closet," said Anya, pointing towards a lingerie shop. "Now, let's go in here. I believe in starting from the skin and working my way out. Unless I start stripping at bone level, of course."

 

Though Anya had a healthy respect for the role of filmy lingerie in the war between the sexes, she was forced to conclude that it made very poor camouflage for a vengeance demon on a mission at the local mall -- even when it was displayed on hangers at Bettina's Boudoir and she and Tara were merely attempting to hide behind it.

Anya felt a moment's nostalgia for the days of bustles, layered petticoats, and whalebone corsets. You could hide a whole platoon of vengeance demons and helpful witches behind undergarments like those. She really should have appreciated them more while they were still in fashion. She cast an unfriendly look at the scraps of pink and red "Valentine specials" hanging between her and the store's entrance: see-through bustiers, garter belts, thong panties . . . . They were almost as uncomfortable to wear as the foundation garments of earlier centuries, but completely useless if you wanted to observe a philandering male without his knowledge.

Anya wondered if Tara was fairing any better, staked out behind her own rack of inadequate unmentionables . . .


 

Tara stared in appalled fascination at a rack of garter belts and crotchless underpants. She'd found herself in some strange situations out of a desire to help before, but this was one of the most bizarre she'd ever experienced. Almost everything in the place was pink or red or black, and had frills where they weren't needed and empty space where fabric was certainly called for.

"What about this?" An oblivious Cindy held up a teddy decorated with floppy-eared animals.

Anya shivered and looked physically ill. "No bunnies!" she said emphatically.

"Why not?" demanded Cindy.

Tara took the teddy away from her and led her further back into the store. "They're, uh, an anti-aphrodisiac. For men, that is. It's a proven psychological fact."

"Really?" Cindy stared wistfully over her shoulder at the cotton-tailed menaces.

Unwilling to have Anya paralyzed by her phobia at this critical moment, Tara nodded firmly and lied in a steady tone. "Yeah. They make guys think of procreation, and lots of kids, and responsibility."

Cindy looked horrified and grateful. "Yeah, I get that. Thanks! Maybe I am going to get some good tips out of this expedition after all."

Tara's feeling of accomplishment was short-lived, as Anya tapped her on the shoulder a moment later. "There he is. The guy with the giggly blonde. Listen, Tara, we have to make this look good. That means you can't break my power center until after I've started my vengeance spell. And you have to do some spell thing, and fight me. D'Hoffryn's a suspicious bastard, and he'll notice if we don't play this just right."

Tara turned just in time to see Cindy staring at the two newcomers, her face turning an enraged puce that went very badly with her lemon chiffon. Any doubt that Anya had fingered the wrong cheating male fled.

"May I help you?" Just as Cindy grabbed Anya and started hissing angry confidences into the vengeance demon's ear, a tall, elegant salesclerk approached, regarding all three women with a frosty eye.

"We want a dressing room," said Anya in a firm voice. She grabbed some garments off a rack and thrust them at Tara. "Try these on." She leaned in closer and hissed, "Don't blow my cover. If I get thrown out of here as a suspected shoplifter, D'Hoffryn will broil me alive before we even have a chance to try your plan."

"It's not my plan—" But Tara found herself jammed into a dressing room with Anya and Cindy, clutching a few wisps of undergarments that she would have been embarrassed to wear in front of Willow, much less the two insane females currently imprisoning her, and separated from the rest of the store by what seemed like a very inadequate curtain.

A curtain that Cindy kept twitching. "It's not even the same one!" she moaned. "This one is even younger! And they're looking at the edible underwear!"

"Shameless," agreed Anya, yanking a protesting Tara's shirt over her head and reaching for the snaps to her bra.

"Do I have to—?" said Tara, trying to cover her breasts with her hands.

"I need you," muttered Anya in her ear, tugging at the zipper of Tara's jeans. "If you get tossed out of here, I'll do something terrible to that sleazy bastard out there, and it will be all your fault." Warm hands started to slide jeans down over Tara's butt. "Besides, I don't see anything for you to be embarrassed about. Nothing at all—"

"He's feeling her up." Cindy's eye was still glued to the opening in the curtain. "He's got her his hand on her ass, right there in front of everyone."

"Really," murmured Anya to Tara in a distracted tone, "Nothing at all to feel embarrassed about."

"They're going into the next dressing room," Cindy announced.

Anya let Tara go and went to look. Panting as if she'd been running, Tara looked for her t-shirt, couldn't find it or her jeans, and snatched up a filmy red camisole and matching thong as being better than no garments at all.

"He's going in there with his bimbo!" muttered Cindy.

Three faces, one above the other, looked out from their dressing room and met the disapproving gaze of the sales clerk. Tara, Anya, and Cindy all jumped back inside. They stood, each with her back against a flimsy plywood wall, listening to the teasing going on in the next room.

"Let me help you with that zipper—and a few other things," said the man inside with a snorting laugh. A series of giggles followed.

Anya grimaced at the banality of it, Cindy moaned in anger, and a red-faced Tara resumed her search for her t-shirt, which she suspected had fallen into one of Cindy's shopping bags.

"It's not fair," hissed Cindy. "Here I am, shopping with a bunch of women, while he plays around as much as he wants. He needs to suffer. I wish he would suffer."

At the sound of the crucial phrase, "I wish," Tara dropped a pink fluffy sweater that was definitely not her property back into a bag and stared up at Anya, who shrugged.

"They're like this a lot. No imagination. That's why I was considered such a good vengeance demon. I could step in, take over a petty wish like that, and do something really creative with it. Like there was one time I created some instruments that the Inquisition later found useful. And then another time, I thought of this plague—"

Tara interrupted. "None of those is what we want right now. Can't you be creative in a non-lethal, non-painful way?"

Cindy was ignoring them both, her ear pressed up against the wall of the booth, listening intently. Anya was waving her hands around helplessly. "Maybe I could send a dozen weasels to eat his intestines? Or--?"

"No!" cried Tara emphatically.

"If I don't do something, D'Hoffryn will step in!"

Tara thought fast. Something non-lethal, but very, very bad— "Cambio!" she cried, tracing a pattern in the air with her finger. Immediately, there was soprano and baritone shrieking from the next booth.

"What did you do?" asked Anya in a half-afraid, half-awestruck tone.

Unmindful of her own near-nudity, Tara dived for the curtain and peered out as Ken erupted from the other dressing room. He was wearing some of the sexy underwear and accessories he had picked out for his companion, who emerged more slowly, still in her jeans, and pulling her blouse on over her bra.

"Who did this to me?" howled Ken, stopping halfway to the mall entrance when his four-inch heel twisted underneath him. He listed to one side, almost taking down a rack of Merry Widows. His hairy legs splayed apart, showing off his black and red garter belts and silky low rise panties. A necklace made of tiny linked handcuffs clinked around this throat.

"Hopefully, your boss will think you did this, Anya." Tara grimaced. "I certainly don't want to take credit."

Anya gave a squeal of pleasure and cuddled the witch happily, as Ken stumbled about to his feet, clutching at the laces to his girdle in shock and horror. A crowd of shoppers was assembling to watch his antics and listen to the screams of the salesclerk. "Tara, you're amazing," Anya said, forgetting her role so entirely she kissed her companion hard and hugged her even harder.

"Well if he expects women to put up with these uncomfortable clothes, I didn't see any reason why he shouldn't have to wear them himself." Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Tara found herself returning Anya's embrace.

"I don't know how it happened, Ken, but it's just clothes," the girlfriend was pointing out.

"Besides," said one of the several women who were staring avidly from the mall entrance. "It's kind of cute."

"And sexy," said her companion.

"Do you think so?" Ken stood up straighter, struggling to master the high heels.

"Very Rocky Horror," said his girlfriend. A slow smile crossed her face and she started to shimmy back and forth in a very come-hither way. "Kind of a turn-on."

Anya's face fell. "Well, that backfired," said a chagrined Tara.

Cindy was even more outraged. "It figures. He's such a whore for attention, he doesn't care how he gets it."

"I am such a screw up," moaned Tara.

"Oh, no, sweetie," Anya patted her on the shoulder. "I'm the one who should have seen this coming. After all, how many times did I make Xander dress up in my undies?" Her expression grew cunning. "But this has given me an idea—"

Both his girlfriend and one of the women from the mall were now sidling up to Ken, and even the sales clerk was showing some interest.

"Sex," muttered Cindy in disgust. "That's all Ken ever cared about. Sex. Well, I wish him all the sex he deserves."

"Hmm," said Anya, and added, almost as an afterthought, "Granted."

Ken screamed and grabbed his crotch. The women who'd been clustering around him stared down and made faces of distaste.

"It's gone!" howled Ken. "It's gone!"

"What's gone?" demanded Tara, forgetting she was still only wearing a thong and the scantiest of tops as she pushed her way through the crowd.

"His, uh, sex," said Anya. "As in all the machinery needed for it."

This was now obvious as Ken, unable to believe that his equipment had vanished without a trace, pulled down his garter belt and lacy undies, examining himself with his hands and looking around as if his masculine parts had been merely mislaid and could be found and reattached. The women in the shop recoiled in horror.

"Wow," said Tara. "I thought maybe you made him a girl, but there's nothing there. As in really nothing."

"I decided no sex was all the sex he deserved," said Anya smugly. "I left him a little hole to pee with, like those baby dolls. Of course, he'll have to sit down if he doesn't want to make a mess." She poked Tara in the arm. "Your turn. Why are you being so nice to me?"

"Huh?" Tara's head reeled for a moment, and then she remembered her part in The Plan. "Oh, yeah." She raised her voice. "You did this! You—you evil demon!" She launched herself at Anya. "My powers of witchcraft have detected you as the source of this abomination!"

"That's spreading it a bit thick," responded Anya as she landed on the carpeting beneath Tara. "All I did was break off his joy stick."

"You said make it look good," hissed Tara, straddling the vengeance demon and holding her down with her thighs. "Am I hurting you too much?"

"Oh, no," said Anya, wiggling beneath her. "This is good. In fact, if you want to bounce up and down a bit more—"

"Act like you're fighting me," hissed Tara. She waved her arm, and a blue fog arose from nowhere, at first following her gesture and then semi-concealing them both. "With any luck, he'll think that's a binding spell instead of my sinus therapy mist."

"Okay." Anya got an arm free and thrashed beneath the witch. "Resistance is useless!" she yelled, her words stumbling over each other. "Even though I'm not all short and all shiny fake metal and I don't have a funny big protuberance like a substitute penis sticking out of my middle! It's useless, do you hear?" She cackled wildly. "Useless!" Damn, she thought, how did I get so bad at this so fast?

Even Tara was unimpressed with this performance. "Anya, I think you've gotten your alien menaces mixed up.  And why are you making that noise?"

"It's maniacal laughter!" Anya's voice dropped almost to a whisper. "I used to do maniacal laughter better than anyone. And deep-voiced laconic threats, too. Halfrek's right, I've gone stale."

"Try for the threats instead." Tara was rising to her hands and knees.

Anya's voice dropped several octaves. "Hear me, witch, I will have my vengeance! I will tear every shred of that teddy off your soft, tender flesh! I will bite into those lush breasts and every inch of your silky, succulent skin will feel my touch—"

Tara snatched the amulet from around Anya's neck and rolled away. Instinctively, Anya tried to struggle to her feet, remembered at the last moment that Tara was helping her, and managed a histrionic fall back onto the floor. A moment later, she felt her power ebb away and looked up to see Tara pounding the amulet fiercely with the heel of a red vinyl platform boot.

Anya stood up, disoriented by her change back to full humanity, and saw D'Hoffryn standing by a rack of garter belts, with Halfrek staring pityingly from a step or two behind him. The demon lord opened his mouth to make some pronouncement, but was diverted by a scream of part-panic, part-relief, and looked to see Ken fondling his restored manly parts, tears running down his face.

Anya whipped around. An almost-naked Tara was still crouched on the carpet, a very sexy boot clutched in one hand. "You!" she screeched, smiling in joy and relief. "You meddling, stupid witch with no fashion sense! You've destroyed my amulet!"

She dove to the floor, shoving Tara over on her back as gently as she could to retain an air of verisimilitude, and began tearing at what little clothing the other woman wore. "I'll pull out every strand of that bad dye-job you don't even bother to keep up, and then I'll shred you, you, you interfering, enchantress—I mean, spellcasting do-gooder! How dare you break my power center! How dare you steal my demonity!"

"Enough!" D'Hoffryn's voice boomed out across the racks of thongs and push-up bras. Tara and Anya rolled apart, staring up at him in considerable trepidation.

"Anyanka, you have failed for the second time. You will be allowed no third chance. You will live out your miserable days as a human."

"But, but—" said Anya, trying desperately not to let her lips curve up into a smile.

"No buts, Anyanka!" said D'Hoffryn, letting his eyes stray towards Tara, who was sprawled on her stomach. "Although the witch who has destroyed your power does seem to have a very nice one. I might investigate it myself if I weren't so busy clearing up the backload of vengeance I have on my hands as a result of your inefficiency and tardiness. I will leave you to deal with the consequences of your own incompetence."


 

As D'Hoffryn dematerialized in a cloud of smoke, Tara saw the eyes of the assembled humans glaze over for a moment and then refocus. She realized that many of them were focusing on her, and she gave an embarrassed squeal and scrambled back into the dressing room on her hands and knees.

She was fumbling around the items strewn around there, looking for her own clothes, when the curtain was flung aside and Cindy stormed in, grabbing up her purse and shopping bags. "You can forget the makeover," she said over her shoulder. "I just want to get as far from that asshole Ken and anything that reminds me of him as I can."

Tara spotted her own clothes at last, and dived for them just as Anya entered the dressing room and grabbed her from behind, hugging her violently and scattering kisses over the nape of her neck.

"You did it! You did it! I'm free!"

Tara tried to turn around in the narrow confines of the dressing room and wound up half-seated, with her back against the plywood wall and Anya astride her, bestowing even more kisses on her neck and lips.

Tara tried to sit up and found herself in an even tighter embrace. "I need to get out of this thing," she said, tugging on the silky camisole.

"Me too," said Anya, pulling off her own top.

Tara lost track of time then, barely conscious even of the brouhaha in the mall as Ken and his girlfriend argued over which accessories they should purchase for him to wear. Several other shoppers were weighing in on the topic. But his dilemma over whether to agree to the women's insistence that he needed to add eyeliner to his shopping basket paled to insignificance against Tara's own discovery that Anya's soft eyelashes created little tingles in her nerve endings as they traced a path against her throat and breasts. She'd never been as critical of the ex-vengeance demon as Willow, and had felt very sorry for her after the abortive wedding, but until this moment, she hadn't realized how every sexy and, um, surprisingly skilled, Anya was. Combined with the rush of magic floating through the air, the thrill of victory, and the very human, curvaceous body pressed next to hers, she found herself giving in to temptation.

"Good thing his garter belt and girdle were your doing and not mine," muttered Anya. "It makes a nice distraction."

"To what? The undoing of your jeans?" Tara's hands suited her actions to her words. After a few minutes, she broke off kissing long enough to say, "We're even luckier that D'Hoffryn didn't notice Ken was still dressed like Dr. Frank-n-Furter after I broke the power center."

"Yes, it's all how you look at it. This way, the world seems richer by one transvestite instead of poorer by one cheating male." Anya's leisurely finger followed a path along the inside of Tara's thigh. "I like my new view of this world. I like it a lot."

The murmur of voices in the store slowly faded away, followed by the sound of pacing outside the dressing room. Tara and Anya barely noticed over the sound of their own heavy breathing. The footsteps stilled, a toe tapped several times, and finally an annoyed voice said, "Excuse me!"

Tara sat up, squeaking in dismay as she realized again just how flimsy that curtain was.

Anya was undismayed. "If you just go away for a few minutes, we'll buy stuff!" she called out. "Lots of expensive stuff."

They heard the salesclerk shift from foot to foot. "Five minutes," she said at last.

 

"Five minutes wasn't nearly enough time, but that's okay, because we can go back to my place now and give each other more orgasms." Anya scooped up a pile of undies, sorted them into two piles, dumped one on the floor of the dressing room and sailed out towards the cash register with the rest.

"We can?" Relieved to be back in her own clothes, and otherwise feeling a bit dazed, Tara followed her and watched the sales clerk ring up items. If these things were sold by the pound, she decided, they were worth more per ounce than gold.

"Of course. We're girlfriends now." Anya beamed and linked her arm with Tara's, nodding at the salesclerk to include her in the announcement. "In that way."

"What?" Tara hadn't known her voice could reach that high a note.

Anya released her, pouting. "Sweetie, I don't know why you can't see this is a perfect rebound relationship for the both of us. You're as different from Xander as possible, and you're so incredibly sweet I can't imagine you ever giving me reason to feel vengancey, so I shouldn't have the least impulse to take up my old ways again. And I'm a very obsessive girlfriend, with a tendency to idealize my love object, so instead of being taken for granted and manipulated like you were with Willow, you can enjoy my complete and utter devotion."

"Uh—" Tara tried to find something to object to in this scenario, but it actually sounded pretty good.

Anya looked around the shop. "I have plenty of money to help you pay for school and nicer clothes. And since the illogical human laws regarding such things forbid us from getting married, I won't be able to nag you about that and you won't feel trapped." She turned to smile at the salesclerk, who was staring at them with a bemused expression. "I'd like two pairs of those edible underpants too. Women's, please."

"Yes, of course." The clerk stepped over to the display and stopped, her hand hovering over the boxes. "What flavor?"

"Hmm." Anya tilted her head to one side. "I used to always get banana for Xander, but considering the altered circumstances, I think I'll try cherry." She smiled at a still flabbergasted Tara, signed the credit card receipt with a flourish, and left the store, her shopping bags held in one hand and the other arm firmly around her new girlfriend's waist.

"You'll get used to me," she assured Tara. "I learned a lot from living with Xander. For instance, you just need to tell me when I'm saying things that annoy you and I'll stop. I'll apologize too, even if I meant what I said. For instance, I'm sorry I said you had no fashion sense."

"That's all right," said Tara. "I don't think you have any either." She thought about objecting to this new arrangement, but instead found her own arm was wrapping itself around Anya's shoulders. She felt very strange, but not in an entirely unpleasant way.

It was just as well she was enjoying herself. Because Tara had the strangest feeling that when one became the object of Anya's affections, resistance was, indeed useless.


 

The End

Now there's a sequel, Sitting on the Dock of eBay, where Tara finds out just how challenging a relationship with Anya can be.  

Please send feedback to: missmurchison@mchsi.com