See chapter 1 for author's notes and disclaimers.
It was that sound Adam heard when he came back with a shuddering breath. He tried to sit up, since face down on cracked pavement was not the most comfortable position in the world, but an unexpected weight prevented it. Willow had buried her face in his neck where it met his shoulders and was still making that gut-wrenching sound.
"Willow," he tried. "Willow." His voice was louder this time, but her grief drowned out all other stimuli. "Willow!" he bellowed, face still to the ground. It worked. She sat bolt upright and stared at him in amazement as he made his way into a sitting position.
She stared at him in disbelief and carefully reached out a hand to the tear in his sweater where his abdomen had been cut open. There wasn't even a trace of a wound. She knew he shouldn't be alive, and she didn't know how he was, but she officially didn't care at the moment. She threw herself into his arms, her hands fiercely gripping his shoulders and nearly toppling them both over, and did something neither one expected.
Her lips met his as relief washed over her. The action momentarily stunned the newly revived immortal, and he gasped in surprise. Willow took advantage of his parted lips and slipped her tongue inside to caress his. Pleasure replacing surprise, Adam brought his hands up her back to cradle her in his arms and began reciprocating the interesting things her mouth was doing to his.
After several long moments they parted, both breathless and unsure of what had just transpired between them. It was Willow who spoke first, "I thought you were dead..."
"I was," he replied, looking into her eyes for her reaction. Seeing the confusion in them, he changed tactics. "I'll explain it all once we get you home. We want to go before any authorities show up, and we need to get you bandaged up," he gestured to her minor wounds.
Looking down, she noticed for the first time the cuts that crawling on the pavement had caused her and agreed. Lifting Willow from his lap and standing, Adam reached down and retrieved his and the other man's swords along with his own cast off coat and escorted her home. Once there, he went to work with an antibiotic and a good portion of a box of band-aids dressing her cuts while he explained to her about his immortality, the Game, etc.
He purposely left out most of his past; she was the first close friend he'd had in years and he didn't want to throw that away because of things that had happened thousands of years ago. He also remained vague about his age. He trusted Willow a lot, but he never trusted completely, so the usual round of half-truths and omissions were in order.
When his explanations were finished, he could no longer contain his curiosity. "Where did you learn that kind of skill in magic?" he inquired. She told him about growing up in Sunnydale, becoming friends with a Vampire Slayer, fighting demons, and learning about witchcraft.
But she couldn't bring herself to tell him everything. 'He wouldn't want to have anything to do with me if I told him what I did to my friends,' she reasoned to herself. So she stuck to the more amusing stories and the ones less focused on her use of magic once it had turned from necessity to addiction.
The pair talked long into the night, but neither mentioned the subject of the kiss they had shared in the alley. Just before sunrise he took his leave and began walking the half-mile to his apartment. As he thought over the night's events, one hand rose to feel where her lips had been against his own, and he smiled wryly to himself, 'I've had worse nights...'