Part 1/2

I'm sitting at home on the couch. I don't know what to do. I sent her back and hour ago, but I feel so strange, still. I figured if I tried on her clothes -- my clothes? -- I could, I dunno, understand better. Understand what could ever make me like that.

And all of a sudden Xander enters.

"New hair," he says. Typical. I changed it last week, and he didn't even notice.

"Uh, yeah. Nice of you to notice," I say. What I really mean is, why can't you be the least bit considerate, you selfish hormonal bastard?

He's jumpy. What, did he go and sleep with Buffy now?

"Look, I'm here to make you an offer," he says.

This is making no sense. Not even Xander-sense. "What sort of offer?" I ask carefully.

"I know you have this -- thing for me. And I'm willing to be... your puppy, your victim, if you'll just promise to leave my friends alone once and for all."

Oh Lord. He thinks I'm her.

And suddenly I realize that this could have benefits.

Many, happy benefits.

I stand to look him in the eye. "And what if I want you to be more than my puppy?" I ask, trying to sound sexy and scary. It comes out like the shy schoolgirl I am.

He falls for it somehow. "Look!" he says. "I'll be your lover. I'll let you turn me, and we can be together forever. Just... just leave Willow alone, ok?"

Incredible! He really will chase the first hottie that crosses his path. Part of me wants to try and seduce him. I end up telling him how I really feel, though, because part of him seems to care. "Gee, you'll just sleep with the first cute girl in leather you see, huh? Faith'd be so proud."

"Faith was a mistake," he says, trying to hide his shame. "And I'm here to fix things." Oh yeah. Fix things by offering yourself to me. Never mind the -real- me.

That is just so wrong, I decide. I tell him so, trying to keep that fake sexy look. "So this is how you do it... Don't you love me?"

"No, I don't love you," he says.

Selfish inconsiderate hormonal bastard. You ought to die.

And then, out of nowhere, he hits me with it.

"You're nothing like her!" he says, impassioned. "You may sound just like Willow, and you may look a bit like her -- on the outside -- but inside, you're nothing like her! She's the best person I know. You may have her memories, but you don't have her soul." He leans in close to whisper in my ear. "And you never will."

Does he love me? It sounds like it... but he's so good at self-deception. "So you love her. Not me," I say. I try tempt him, saying, "Why? Don't you think I'm sexy?" because I have to know if it's just the leather, just the sex and the danger and the death. I have to.

"Do you really have to ask?" he replies. "There's this thing between us that's not going to go away, no matter how much I screw up. I'll always love her, and even you can't take that away from me."

Say the words, damn it! "But you never told her," I whisper. "And now, you never will." The sentence comes out weak and cracked from fear, not terrifying and cruel like it's supposed to.

"See, that's where you're wrong," What the hell?!

He begins to explain. "There was this time, where she ended up in the hospital..."

Oh no.

"...and I wasn't sure if she was going to make it, so I told her. I told her how much she means to me; how empty my life would be without her. I told her 'I love you,'"

It was him. I came back from the brink of death for him.

"....She thought I was him." He's having trouble being a man now, like he likes to say, when he tries to keep from crying. It's a good thing he can't see my face like this, because I'm having trouble too. I can't even think straight.

"She thought I was him! Her boyfriend. Oz. No matter how much she denies it, no matter how close we ever get, I know that deep down, I'll always be second rate in her heart. Now that she's got him. She'll never really love me the way she loves him."

He can't believe that! Xander, I --

"...she'll never know how much I really love her. And she'll probably go to her deathbed hating me now, for Faith, or for this, or for the million other stupid things I've done to hurt her."

Xander. I don't hate you. I don't, I don't, I don't....

"But I know how much I love her, even if she never will. And maybe that's not much, but that's enough."

It is. I know it is.

The tears come out, unwanted and uninivited and quiet, but real and passionate and human becauseI just can't help myself when it comes to him.

Gently, he touches my back and shoulder. "So... I guess I'm spared?" he asks. He can be so dumb sometimes.

I love him anyway.

"Yeah, you're spared," I pillow my head against his shoulder. It feels so good, so right. "It's only me," I tell him.

He doesn't get it, so I explain.

"I sent the demon back an hour ago."


Part 2/2
Xander just stood there as she leaned into him. Slowly, he let his arms relax around her, hold her close.

They stayed like that for a long time.

"Will, what are we going to do?" Xander asked at last.

Willow didn't say anything.

"I mean, you do know I'd do anything for you. Anything," he said, hauling her face up by the chin to look her deeply in the eye.

Suddenly, Willow knew exactly how Oz had felt at Christmas.

She fumbled for a response. "That's, uh, nice," she managed. < Nice?! NICE?! What's wrong with me?! >

"Yeah," he said. "Look, maybe I should go. You -- " He turned away, broke their embrace. " -- can call Oz. Or whatever you do when I screw up."

"Xander, wait!" She had to stop this. They couldn't go on living like this, keeping secrets like this.

"I told Oz," she said. "About how I felt about you." He stopped, turned around. "Last night." She saw his eyes, full of hope. "He said that maybe I should take some time, figure out my priorities. And then you --"

"Let you down yet again," he finished.

"Alone and kinda loveless," she replied. She remembered crying her heart out in the girls' bathroom, thinking that she had truly lost any chance at real love. "I don't blame him, though." She -really- didn't want to tell Xander this next part. But they needed everything out in the open. "See, when he came over for Christmas --"

Xander didn't like where this was going. It smacked of romance and passion, the bad kind, the kind not involving him at all, except maybe as a subject of pillow talk.

" -- and I kind of, sorta, um, tried to seduce him."

Xander forced some words out of his mouth. "So...was it good?" He felt like he wanted to die, only first he had to crawl away. But he couldn't move, not an inch. It was like watching a car accident. You see this horrible, horrible thing unfold before your eyes, but you keep watching in perverse fascination.

"Xander, nothing happened," she said.

They both let out a stream of breath neither one of them realized they'd been holding.

Only it wasn't quite over for Willow. "But, see, he stopped. And, and you didn't."

Xander groaned inwardly. "Will, if things had been reversed, would -you- have stopped?"

Willow squirmed under the spotlight of that question. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. "I guess. I mean...I knew I wasn't ready. Why didn't you?"

"I was desperate," he said. "And Faith isn't Oz. I...just didn't want to die, without ever -- I mean, I never thought that you and me -- that we'd...before we died or the world ended or... because you and he were so tight. And I know I'll never measure up to the 'Great and Powerful' Oz, because I can't. I'm not him. I'm not the nicest guy in the world, or even the nicest guy in Sunnydale. But I -- I -love- you." He ran his hand through her hair. "Even if I have a lousy way of showing it."

She looked at him then, really looked. There was nothing but love in his eyes. She had a sudden thought. "Would you really do anything for me?" she asked.

Xander stared at her. God, she was so beautiful. Somehow the outfit didn't seem as scary before now with her in it. He swallowed. Hard. "Yeah, Wills. You name it, it's yours."

"Would you dance for me?" she asked.

His world stood on ear. "This wouldn't involve stripping, would it?"

"You wish." A smug grin wrapped itself around her face. She looked down at the rug for a moment. "I just haven't seen you dance in the longest time. Not since Homecoming." She looked back up at him, and the smug grin had been replaced by doe eyes. "C'mon. Please?"

He looked around. "There's no music," he protested.

"Never stopped you before," she replied.

He hesitated, then flashed a hopeful grin at her, and started to dance, slowly at first, then more enthusiatically, with arms and legs flailing in uncoordination.

She sat down on the couch, enjoying the spectacle.

"Oh no you don't!" he cried. He grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her to the 'dance floor.' She started to smile as he swept her across the room in a move that was somewhere between the dance scene from 'The King and I' and the Running Man.

Suddenly, it him how close she was, again.

"Look, a slow dance," he said.

He slowed to a waltz, drew her closer. They moved in time to a simple four-four beat, doing the box step. Then he tilted his head down, and she hers up, and they kissed like it was the night of Homecoming all over again, like nothing else in the world really mattered, except that they they loved each other.

And for them, nothing else really did.
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