Was It Always Like This?

Chapter 13

Xander joined them after dinner to hear the outcome of their visit earlier that day. He looked genuinely upset when Willow gently told him about Mike’s death and turned sharply towards Giles. “You can find a way to get the thing that did this, right?”

Giles, relaxing on the sofa as jet lag threatened to overtake him again, nodded and moved to place his mug on the coffee table. “I have asked some of my colleagues at the council to check some references for me and Willow and I will make a first pass at figuring this out tomorrow”

“Why not now?” Xander asked quietly. “It wouldn’t be the first time we had pulled an all nighter when people’s lives were at stake”

Buffy, snuggled in the armchair, looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Xander if Giles says we wait then we wait”

Willow looked up as well. “We’re both pooped after today’s mojo and the next bit will take a lot of concentration so it would be best to wait until Giles and I are rested”

Xander looked set to argue when Giles stifled a yawn. “Honestly Xander, I have gone over the frequency of the attacks and their outcomes and I think we can afford the risk to take our time and be careful with this”

“Besides” Buffy smiled sweetly, hoping to cut through some of the tension. “The professor isn’t getting any younger”

Giles glared at the girls as all three started to giggle. Xander looked a little confused but the change in atmosphere seemed to calm him a little and he was soon persuading Willow to tell all about her subterfuge and the ensuing spectacle of Giles being a ‘babe magnet’. Willow didn’t need much persuasion and soon both Dawn and Buffy were helpless as she performed her over the top version of Mrs Wayne.

After an hour Xander said he would accompany Buffy on her patrol and Dawn yawned and headed off to bed, mumbling about needing to pace herself before the big weekend shopping trip. Willow and Giles were scrunched down at either end of the sofa and neither could really be bothered moving too much.

“Don’t wait up for me, I think I’ll take a longer patrol tonight, cover the outlying cemeteries at the edge of town.” Buffy said as she grabbed her jacket from behind the door.

“Do you think there are likely to be any problems out there?” Giles asked, his interest peaked a little by the change to her usual routine.

“She just wants to make sure she gets a couple of good fights in” yawned Willow. “Helps her sleep” she smiled cheekily at Buffy.

Giles eyebrows rose a little and he glanced at Willow quickly before turning back towards Buffy. “Make sure you are careful. You always prolong the fights unnecessarily when you get like this”

Xander appeared from the kitchen with a packet of chips and looked around the slightly bemused faces in the living room. “What’s the what guys, are we going on patrol or not?”

Willow was the first to recover and tore her glance away from an embarrassed looking Buffy to Xander. “Oh, nothings up, Giles was just joining in the girl chat, perhaps you should get going?”

Buffy shook her head to clear her thoughts and vowed to spend a little time explaining the new boundaries to Giles and avoiding Willow’s questions as much as she could. She mumbled something about seeing them in the morning and pulled Xander out the door.

Willow turned to look at Giles, her head resting against the back of the sofa. “I don’t think Buffy was very happy with the new ‘sharing’ you” she suggested.

He took a deep breath and shook his head slowly. “What did I say this time?” he asked in a slightly resigned tone. “Surely she hasn’t forgotten so much about our early patrols and training sessions?”

“I don’t want any details but she will probably choose the expensive shoe shop to wreak her revenge” Willow smiled as he grimaced. “What on earth possessed you to say it out loud?” she asked and then checked herself. “I mean, I’m assuming you actually aren’t possessed or anything?” she leaned across and pinched him.

“That’s not really lid lid test for possession, you know” he grumbled as he rubbed his arm. “I don’t know, do you think I could get away with blaming the jet lag?”

Willow shook her head and stood to clear some of the mugs. “What I can’t understand is how you could know about this and I didn’t get it until Faith blurted it out at the Bronze”

“Faith told you that Buffy gets…..” he stumbled to a halt, not sure there was any way to finish the sentence and still be sane at the end of it.

“No” Willow vigorously shook her head. “And eeuuww” she shuddered at the thought of the two slayers being that close. “Faith was a little more open to the physical side of slaying and she was telling us one night all about the buzz from her fights and just sort of let slip that she sometimes got hungry and ho..” she ground to a halt as well, not sure she could use the word in front of him. There followed a rather uncomfortable silence until Willow sat down in the armchair and pulled her knees up to her chin. “How did you know about it?” she asked quietly, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.

His head rose quickly and he met her eyes. “It wasn’t a regular part of slayer awareness training but one of the more recent watcher diaries touched upon it briefly and I tried to discuss it with Buffy. However, that proved beyond even our legendary ability to communicate and we finally got around to mutually agreeing never to discuss it.” Willow nodded her head, relieved and unsure why, and continued to stare at him. He became uncomfortable under her gaze and looked down at his hands, resting on his knees. “So much for my high expectations of a more adult relationship” he sighed and stood up slowly. ks lks like I’ve just ruined any chance of Buffy or you seeing me as anything other than a strange old man who knows too many of the skeletons in your closets”

Willow stood as well and stretched her legs a little. “I don’t need a closet any more and I never saw you as that” she smiled and started moving round the room, putting lights out and checking windows were closed. “I’d like to think that we had an almost adult relationship right from the very beginning and, although it has grown over the years, it didn’t need much tinkering to keep it on the right track”

“You saw me as a father figure” he suggested quietly and moved towards her as she shook her head in disagreement. “You even taunted me for it when you were overcome with the dark magics”

Willow stopped on the second stair and turned back to him. “Giles, I was out of my mind, bent on destroying every part of our friendship even before I tried to destroy you” she took a deep breath. “I thought you understood that I regretted the things I said to you more than what I did to you?” she put her hand out to the bannister and rested it on his. “Your physical wounds were bad enough but I could help to nurse them, there isn’t any way to make you forget what I said and I know that, but I had hoped that we had started again and were almost back to trusting one another”

He glanced at where her hand met his and the common link in all of her strange behaviour suddenly came to him. He took an involuntary step back and pulled his hand away. “It was me” he said quietly and looked up at her in confusion. “Every time you jumped or looked scared today it was because I was near you, touching you”

Willow started to deny this suggestion but she could see the certainty in his eyes and finally sat down on the stair in resignation. “I don’t know what is wrong with me” she admitted. “When that woman started paying attention to you earlier I found it quite funny to start with and then it got icky and then I got all jealous-y” she looked up to watch his reaction. “I know I don’t have any right to get jealous about you but I wasn’t consciously doing anything, it was all coming from some weird place inside my head and I…” She ground to a halt and seemed to be deep in thought for several moments, her eyes looking at, but not seeing him. Finally she slowly shook her head and seemed to come to a decision of some kind. She ran her hand through her hair “It’s happened so suddenly” she started then checked herself. “Or, actually, it has happened so slowly over such a long period of time that I didn’t even notice it until just now” she looked up into his eyes. “I’ve missed you so much since I got back and seeing you again reminded me”

He seemed a little surprised and then realised that his body was incapable of processing any new data and keeping him upright so he sank onto the bottom stair and leaned against the wall.

“This is completely ridiculous and can’t be happening” she s sud suddenly angry with herself.

“What do you mean?” he said quietly, determined to push her to make the first move in whatever was happening.

“I mean” she continued. “I can’t possibly be falling in love with you, I still have dreams about Tara and they aren’t just floaty, smiley dreams they are technicolour, full action with surround sound dreams” she stood up again and pushed past him to pace in the bottom hallway. “I mean I’m gay, right, so that means that I like girls, right, and you’re a guy which means that I can’t possibly want to kiss behind your ear just to hear what sound you make in your throat” she took a deep breath and turned towards him. “Right!”

His head had decided to put everything after the word ‘love’ into a buffer to be downloaded and dealt with later. “You’re falling in love with me?” he asked and found his mouth suddenly dry.

“No” she practically shouted and then remembered Dawn upstairs and beckoned him into the kitchen. “I just explained that I can’t be” she stood with her back to the fridge and he hovered uncertainly near the door. “It must be something else and I’m just muddled up because you’re back here and everything is going well and we did the spell together today and..” she ground to a halt unable to come up with any other excuses.

They stood silently for a few moments until he finally picked up on the rest of her previous outburst. “You want to kiss me?” he whispered fiercely and moved further into the room.

Willow groaned and covered her face with her hands. “It’s wrong” she mumbled and turned to rest her forehead against the fridge. “How can I feel this way about you and still be in love with Tara?” He could hear the complete confusion in her voice and knew that this was at the root of her recent behaviour.

“Willow” he murmured softly as he moved to stand behind her. “Please turn around, I can’t do this without seeing your eyes” he rested his hand on her shoulder and felt the shudder going through her again.

It took several moments, during which he didn’t think she was going to react to him, before she finally turned around and dropped her hands to her sides. Her face bore a look of anguish but he could also see the blush that suggested a raised pulse and could tell that her breathing was a little more belaboured than before. “I don’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable and I would die rather than ruin our friendship..” he paused.

“You’ve got but face” she smiled weakly at him and raised her hand to run her index finger down his cheek.

“But” he smiled at her. “I need to know whether our feelings are mutual and what your concerns really are before we can work out what to do about this”

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I would guess the mutual parts the easy one to get out of the way first, I know you can’t possibly feel the same for me and I wish I could find some way to get rid of these feelings and go back to being your friend”

He lifted her hand and pulled her palm round to his lips, gently kissing it, his eyes seeking out and holding hers. Her breathing got shallower and considerably faster as the look of shock on her face eventually transformed into one of desire. “Perhaps we should leave this until the morning when we are both….rested?” he suggested, very aware of how close he was to forgetting his good intentions and pulling her tight against his own body there and then.

“Ehm” she mumbled as he continued to plant tiny kisses on her palm. “Perhaps that would be for the best because it has been a very long day and you are jet lagged and I think I definitely need to lie down right now” she took a deep breath and gently pulled her hand from his. She stared down at her hand, expecting to see it looking different somehow and then looked back up into his eyes. “Oh yes, definitely some discussing to d the the morning” she mumbled and slipped past him towards the stairs.

“Goodnight Willow” he mumbled some minutes later, when he could finally find his breath and his voice. He was having difficulty believing that he had encouraged her to stop and knew that it would have taken very little persuasion for her to take things a step further. “Bugger” he mumbled to himself as he slowly climbed the stairs and walked past her room to get to his bed.