Tears Like Sugar by Dana Woods

Warnings: Smoking of the marijuana. Underage sexual thangs vaguely put out there.

*
Summer in Sunnydale is a hot, sticky thing even at night, and Tara feels like she's in her element as she sits on the back porch at Revello Drive. Sweaty and flushed, with the cotton material of her shorts and tank top clinging damply. Hair pulled up, with tendrils stuck to her face.

The backyard smells green, and the air is thick, and the world is lush and heavy. Fireflies twinkle in patterns like stands of Christmas lights all knotted together, half the bulbs missing.

It's close and cloying and pervasive. It's suffocating out here in the dark. Tara drapes herself along the top step, back against the railing, her hands reaching for the little box she brought with her from the bedroom.

Everyone's out with that...robot. Testing out the new programming. Slaying things.

It's like some kind of hazy dream, sitting at home while the others face the demonic and supernatural. A parody of normalcy, her watching the night sky on the back porch and rolling a joint while Dawn's upstairs in her bed. She could be a babysitter waiting for a perfect pair of parents to return from a quality night out at dinner.

Her fingers clench and she only just manages not to destroy the progress she's made with the thin paper and bits of green.

She used to baby-sit when she was in high school. Another parody of normalcy, that. The Pitzer twins were starved for attention. Angie and Peter Nelson were highly neurotic clean freaks. Danny Carter was disturbingly silent and wise-eyed. Little Ellie Erikson clawed her own arms into bloody patchworks on a regular basis.

Tara licks the edge of paper and seals the joint up, holding it up for inspection and satisfied with its even distribution. The lighter flares, making her blink, and she takes a long hit and feels the smoke slide down into her lungs.

There are times, and this is one of them, when Tara knows with certainty that everything about her has always been, and will always be, a mocking parody of what it should really be. Could have been. Might have been.

The back door opens, and she hears Dawn's hesitant voice. "Tara?"

It takes more effort than it should for Tara to turn her head, and she feels like she hasn't blinked in a year. Dawn is standing in the doorway, a colt of a girl with the shiniest hair and the biggest eyes and an example of the saddest parody that Tara's ever seen.

"It's okay, Dawnie. I'm right here."

Dawn steps out, the door closing behind her. She doesn't raise a brow at the joint Tara's holding with two fingers. They stay behind a lot, her and Dawn, while everyone else mingles in the reality. It's their job, preserving the parody, and they do it so well. Tara's little secret wasn't a secret for very long.

Tara shifts around, opens her legs, and Dawn sits in front of her on the second step, leaning her back against Tara's chest. One of Tara's arms curls around the delicate shoulders in front of her, hand reaching up to set the slightly wet end of the joint to Dawn's lips. Tara's free arm snakes around Dawn's waist, her thumb stroking the girl's abdomen through her shirt.

Dawn pulls her mouth from the joint, taking it in one hand, lightly gripping Tara's calf with the other. When she exhales the smoke breathily, her hand relaxes on Tara's leg and her head tilting back. Tara lets her finish the second half of the joint, takes the roach and sets it in a small metal ashtray and rubs her cheek against Dawn's hair.

"I'm going to count the grass," Dawn says abruptly, craning her neck to settle dilated eyes on Tara. "The blades. Of grass. I bet there's a billion of them. Just in the yard."

Tara runs her hand up Dawn's arm, smiling. "I think there's too many to count. You'd run out of numbers."

Dawn faces forward again, her weight falling against Tara like a too thick blanket. It's too hot, really, to be this close to someone else. Makes the air...less plentiful.

"I'll make new ones," she tells Tara.

"New what?" Tara asks absently as she presses her face against Dawn's hair.

Dawn pulls Tara's legs around her waist so that they rest in her lap. Her little hands dance across Tara's skin. "New numbers. New everything. New real things. They'll be mine, but I'll share them with you. No one else. Not even Spike," she adds, like that's a big deal.

But it's not a big deal, because Tara and Dawn are the only two people in this parody, the only ones who understand the way things aren't, and Spike wouldn't get it even if Dawn tried to explain it.

Tara falls back when Dawn suddenly spins around. She catches herself on her hands, braces them behind so that she can look at Dawn, who tucks her knees under her and sets her hands on Tara's thighs. Her eyes are round and black and so very lost.

"Talk to me, sweetie," Tara murmurs, lifting her foot to brush it against Dawn's.

"We're all alone," Dawn says with agitation, her nails digging into Tara's skin. "They don't...they're not--"

Dawn deflates suddenly, collapsing against Tara and pressing her forehead to the valley between Tara's breasts.

"I know," Tara says softly, lying back and reaching for Dawn, pulling the girl down on top of her. She pries Dawn's face from her chest, tilts it up and runs her fingers along Dawn's cheek and forehead and chin and brows and lips. Their legs tangle together, sweat making their skin cling stubbornly, adhering them to each other.

Dawn's eyes drift close and the tension seeps from her in one fell swoop. She curls on top of Tara, head nestled on Tara's breasts, her hand tickling the skin at Tara's throat.

Tara doesn't tell Dawn that it's not just the two of them. That it's all the broken people who hold the truth deep inside of them, keeping it away from others for the sake of everyone but themselves. Dawn knows all that.

Dawn's head lifts and her lips brush against Tara's, dry and soft, a barely there kiss. She pulls away slowly, watching Tara and waiting for a reaction.

"I love you always, Dawnie," Tara tells her, and Dawn's lips return, almost-chaste kiss, and there are fine shudders wracking Dawn's thin-limbed body, sobs caught at the back of her throat, and Tara moves her lips to Dawn's cheek, tongue slipping out to lick at a trail of tears. "Not salt," she breathes, taking more. "Like sugar."

"I dream of falling," Dawn whispers moving her head to that they're forehead to forehead. "And I wake up and it doesn't go away."

"Are you falling now?" Tara asks, hands in Dawn's hair, fingers running through the long, thick strands of it.

"This is landing," she tells Tara, sugar trickling down to Tara's lips as Dawn carefully lines them up, arms stretched above their heads, bodies touching from fingertips to toes.

No, it's not. Because Tara is falling--still, always, and ever. Constantly plummeting and long past reaching out for something to slow her down, something to hold on to. It's just a trick of perception that Dawn doesn't realize that she's landed on something that's falling, that she might even think she's ascending upwards finally.

A trick of perception that Tara makes truth, with tears like sugar and tiny little razorblade cuts on the inside of Dawn's thighs where no one will ever see them or the scars until everything is different, with Tara's hands between Dawn's legs, making Dawn float high and higher and highest until her body is snapped up high with the rest of her, bowing and arching and shaking all at the same time.

It's a parody of abnormality within a parody of normalcy, and it's Tara's job to preserve it.

.End