Xander didn't know what to say, which was a surprise in itself because it seemed to happen so rarely. He couldn't even think of a joke or a pun or a witty comment that could break the moment, and that was what he was best at. She was lying on top of him, all of her weight pressed into his body, her arms around his neck, and all he could do is stare at her. Was he dreaming? It certainly felt like it, because this could never happen in real life, not ever. She was way too smart for this. He was destined to live his life alone and in pain, just like he had always planned, so this couldn't be real.
But just to be sure, he reached one hand to her face just a couple of inches away. He touched her hair, hanging in short curtains around her face, the strands soft and silky to the touch, and he felt the corners of his mouth tug up into a smile as he felt himself release a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"You look confused," she told him, a tender smile on her face.
"I always look confused," he said, the same smile looking back at her.
"Well, yeah," she allowed. "But…more so."
"But…" he said, "Weren't we arguing a couple of minutes ago?"
"Yeah, and…?"
"Just trying to piece together how we got from there…to here…" he said slowly.
"Does it really matter?"
He smiled, a real and true smile, as he held her tightly to him and used his weight to roll her over onto her back, him on his side next to her. He gently shifted her a little, resting her head on one of the pillows at the head of the bed. His hand was caught beneath her weight, warm against her skin, and the other rested on her stomach as he looked down at her.
"You lied?" he asked her, his voice quiet and breaking with tension.
"Yeah," she said softly.
"But what about Oz?" he asked. "I thought you wanted to make things right with him."
"I don't love him," she said. "I wanted to, I really did, but as much as I've tried and hoped it would happen, I can't, because my heart belongs to someone else. I've been close to it, but it's just not there, not like what I feel for you."
"He loves you," Xander told her.
"Yeah, keep on making me feel better, Xand," she said dryly.
"Sorry," he said with a shrug.
"I feel bad for hurting him," she continued, "but if it's a choice between you and him…I'm not going anywhere. You were right," she told him.
He gave a wide grin. "Really?" he asked. "I'm right? Can I get that in writing? It might be the only time it ever happens." She grinned at him, and a blank expression came over his face. "Wait…about what?"
"What you said," she told him. "About me being a coward."
"What?" he said. "No, Will, I didn't mean that. You're one of the bravest people I've ever met, and that includes the vampire slayers. I was just angry."
"You may have been angry, but it was still true," she said. "I've been so mad at you, you know. I thought you were just being Horny Guy and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Or the right place at the right time," he corrected.
"Well, yeah, we know that now," she said with a grin, "But I never did consider that you had feelings for me. I should have had more faith in you. I should have known you wouldn't just throw everything away because you were curious after thirteen years of friendship, or for a fumble with someone who didn't mean anything. I should have known that you wouldn't do that to yourself, and you wouldn't do that to me. When you said that you…"
"Loved you?" he offered with a grin as her face blushed red, and he let out a chuckle.
"Yeah," she said, her eyes flickering away from him. "It was like it wasn't real. My feelings for you were always kind of…unrequited, you know? But that feeling was familiar, and I knew exactly where I stood with that. Knowing that you…"
"Love you?" he offered again, and once more came the adorable blush.
"Yeah," she repeated, "You're right, there's nothing else left to hide behind."
"Do you want to hide from it?" he asked her.
She looked over his face, took in the dark brown eyes that made her feel like she might melt if he kept looking at her like that, and the smile that she had known forever. "No," she told him, her voice almost a whisper as she brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. "I don't"
"Good," he said, leaning forward and kissing her forehead gently. "And it's not like you were entirely wrong, either," he told her. "I haven't exactly been Mr. 'Here's-How-I'm-Feeling'. But you have to know that the reason why we haven't talked about what happened is because…I know how happy you were with Oz. I knew that we had done something terrible, but I thought if I stayed away, you could have that with him again."
"You didn't think I'd want to know how you felt?" she asked.
"I didn't think it would matter," he said sadly. "I didn't want you to know, because I didn't want your pity, and I didn't want to risk our friendship after so long. You know that's the most important thing in the world to me, and I thought that just leaving things be would make it go away. If you hadn't come over here tonight, I never would have told you."
"Well, then, it's a good thing that I did," she said with a smile. "So, what do we do now?"
Xander's eyebrows rose immediately, a look on his face that said exactly what was running through his mind at that moment.
"Xander!" she warned lightly with a laugh, her hand tapping his arm gently.
"What?" he asked incredulously. "You say something like that to an eighteen year old guy and you expect them to not think about sex? I thought you were the smart one."
"I mean…" she said, "You and me… Is this what you want?"
He smiled a trademark half-smile, his hand gently tucking a piece of hair behind her ears so he could see her properly. "It really, really is," he said honestly. "But you and me together…for real…would that work?"
"Do you think I have a crystal ball?"
"You do have a crystal ball," he said. "I bought it for your last birthday."
"Well…okay," she allowed, "But what I mean is, I can't see into the future, Xander. I can't tell you that things are going to be okay, that they'll work out and we'll live happily ever after. I wish I could. It doesn't mean we can't try."
"But we're going to hurt people," he told her. "Oz, Cordelia…we've already put them through so much, but if we actually decided to give this a shot…"
"Then at least they'd know we didn't hurt them for nothing," Willow argued. "I'm sick of being the good girl who worries about everyone else and their feelings. I want to do something for me, Xander. I just want to be happy."
"You think I'll make you happy?" he asked, a smile on his face and his finger caressing her cheek gently.
She didn't reply. She just smiled, one hand moving to touch his cheek with tenderness as she leaned up, her lips touching his softly. She pulled back, checking his eyes for any sign of regret or confusion, but there wasn't any. Her fingers moved over the skin of his cheek, trembling just a little.
She pulled him down to her, his hand moving to rest on the bare skin at her hip where the shirt had ridden up just a little, his fingers grazing over it and finding it softer than he had ever dreamt it could be. He felt her hand move from his cheek down to his shoulder, then to his chest, resting over his sweater.
"I don't want to lose you," he said, looking down at her sincerely. "Ever."
"You won't," she said. "You can't."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"About this more than anything," she told him.
He grinned, his arm moving up her side, his hand smoothing over the cotton shirt softly. He brushed over a hint of the curve of her breast, feeling the indent of the her bra underneath unintentionally, and it sent an illicit thrill through his body. He moved his face closer to hers, eyes taking in her face.
"I'm gonna kiss you now," he told her. "If that's okay with you."
"Well, finally," she said with a smirk. "I've been waiting all night."
He smiled again, his eyes crinkling in the most adorable way, as he lowered his head to hers, nose by nose with her, her warm breath washing over his face and making his heart race even more than it had been already.
"Our first real kiss as an actual couple," Willow said quietly. "Are you excited?"
He squirmed a little, trying to hide exactly that. "More than you'd care to know," he told her.
He moved his hand from her side, bringing it up to brush away some hair that had fallen across her cheek. He tucked it behind her ears, his fingers caressing the strands, the feeling familiar yet exciting. He moved his finger to her chin, tilting it lightly to allow him better access to those sweet lips, her tongue running over them nervously and wetting them in anticipation of him.
When his lips met hers, it felt right. It felt special, in the best way, because before when they had kissed, it was illicit and secret and they were cheating on other people. But now…it just felt like things were falling into place, and that made something warm well up in his stomach. His lips left hers, just momentarily, touching them back again to her top lip, and then her bottom one.
She parted her lips, just slightly, just enough so that he could feel the warm pinkness inside, could almost see it behind his closed eyes as he kissed her lips again. Her top lip was caught between both of his, and he heard and felt a tiny sigh escape her.
She was the one who deepened the kiss, opening her mouth just that little bit wider. It wasn't their first kiss, but this was what they had been waiting for all of this time. She felt his hand moving from her chin to the side of her head, the tips of his fingers lost in her hair, the warmth of his touch penetrating her skin to make her cheek blush a bright red just from his contact, and she felt her fingers closing around a handful of his sweater to pull him closer still.
His touch was soft, which seemed strange when the situation felt so intense. She could feel half of his weight on her, pressing against her body and taking her breath away, but then, he did that anyway. He'd always had the ability to make her speechless, and to make her breathless, and to make her lose herself with just one look into his eyes, and she honestly couldn't see that ever changing.
His fingertips lightly stroked at her skin, massaging the curve of her cheek, around the bottom of her ear, and along her hairline. It sent shivers through her, and she opened her mouth a little wider, the tip of her tongue sneaking out just a little to taste him. She tilted her head as his tongue met hers, soft and stroking against one another. They duelled together lightly in the warmth of their joined lips, this kiss something she'll never ever forget, although she was pretty certain that she'll remember every single kiss with him.
She felt his hand move from her face down to her hip again, gripping her there, as he finally disengaged his lips from hers, more for the need of oxygen than anything else.
He looked down at her, eyes lit up with a smile that spread all over his face. "That was…"
"The way our first kiss should have been?" she asked.
"I was gonna go with 'wow', but your way is more poetic," he told her. "And also true."
"That's how I always dreamed of you kissing me," she told him.
"That's how I always dreamed of kissing you," he replied. "Not that I didn't enjoy kissing you before…" he said hurriedly. "But it always made me feel guilty after, and we always had to go back to other people. This is just…right," he told her. "You and me, no one else and nothing to feel guilty about. I like it."
"I love it," she said with a grin.
"I love you," he told her, one fingertip lightly stroking an exposed spot of skin at her hip and looking at her with awe in his eyes. "Who would have thought that we'd end up together?"
"You mean apart from everyone we've ever met?" she asked incredulously.
"Yeah," he said, "Apart from them."
She laughed, "So, you wanna kiss me again?" she asked.
"Let me save us a little time here," he said, "It doesn't matter how many times you me ask that question, the answer is always gonna be yes."
"Good to know," she said as she looked at him expectantly with questioning eyes.
"What?" he asked, confused.
"Waiting…" she said in a singsong voice.
"Oh, right!" he exclaimed in realisation, his lips swooping down to meet hers.
It was soft and it was gentle and it was hot and it was passion, it was everything all rolled into one kiss. It was something that Xander had never really experienced before, a kiss with someone he was in love with. With Cordelia it was all lust and hurried, and before with Willow was hot and forbidden, but this was new. It was love, of that he was in no doubt.
They parted, and all he could do was look at her, which was good because he loved doing that. His arms came around her, holding her to him, letting her nestle in his shoulder and his neck, her breath hot on his skin, making him feel like she was the one who'd always kept him warm, even in the darkest days of his life. It felt like all he'd ever had to do was look at her, and nothing was could ever be bad, and he placed a kiss in her hair, just for that reason.
"Why did we fall apart?" she asked him, looking up at him with sadness and wonder in her eyes.
"We had to," he told her, his hand coming to her face to brush away the hair falling on her forehead. "We had to fall apart, so we could come back together. We had to go through everything else so we could have this."
"Then I'm glad," she said. "Because I wouldn't swap this for anything."
"Me either," he said with a smile.
Her chin rested on his chest, "What I said earlier," she said, "About not knowing whether or not we'll get a happy ending?"
"What about it?" he asked.
"I was wrong," she said. "I think we will."
"You know what," he said with a knowing smile. "So do I."
The country music played on, the CD he had chosen earlier on loop, as the world continued to turn outside of this room where everything seemed to stand still.
But inside, Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg were in a very good mood.
The End
