Showers were an interesting thing. Soft water pulsing down your back, smooth wet heat tracing a pattern over your skin, as you rubbed the soap between your hands, building up a lather nice enough to spread over your body.
Or maybe the lather will go onto someone else's body, someone standing before you waiting patiently, dripping slightly chilled water onto cooler tile. Skin against skin, hands against spine, trailing soap bubbles along the path of bones.
Showering together was a new thing for Willow and Tara. First came magic, then came kissing, then came the night spent together, wrapped in each other's arms against the future they had just witnessed in a spell they had sworn they would not do. And when their bodies could no longer just hold the other, had to touch, and taste, and feel, then came the shower, giggling and goofy, steam obscuring the huge stupid grins on their faces — the grins of those first few fleeting moments of love shooting through their veins.
Willow smoothed her soapy hands over Tara's body, mapping every inch of flesh with the impermeance of soap film. The identifications of muscle, bones, tissues, anatomy 101 honors, ran through her mind as she touched her.
Cervical vertebrae, jugular vein, trapezius, clavicle, sternum, cooper's ligament, areole, nipple — hands cupping breasts as her mouth traced over the gentle curve of Tara's jawline — mandible, temporal, zygomatic arch before dipping back down to her lips.
Soapy hands slid down further, past the delicately curved stomach (that potbelly Tara occasionally complained about, but Willow always thought it was cute), pushing against hipbones, comfortably padded, so no marks were left when Willow pushed Tara against the cool tile wall, no marks on Tara's hips, unlike the marks left on Willow's knees, still somewhat boney, faint bruises forming from the tile floor as she knelt between Tara's legs.
The anatomy lesson began again, words appearing in the back of her mind, deep in her mind, crammed down by primal urges of sensation and emotion. Abdominal muscle, pubic bone, labia majora, labia minora, clitoris — Willow's tongue rewrote old anatomy books, old diagrams missing the single piece of flesh so important at this moment.
Tara's hands slid through Willow's hair, water still cascading down from the lime-scaled showerhead, tapping a rhythm on Willow's neck and shoulders, a rhythm Willow echoed in her movements until Tara cried out — softly, softly, don't wake the dorm — and slowly slid down the shower wall, down to kiss the girl smiling gently as the water fell down on her.
This Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer story was written by Kate Bolin. If you liked it, there's plenty more at http://www.dymphna.net/fanfic/. And you can feedback her at dymphna@dymphna.net.