Touch, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic
by
willa
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I danced next to Joss Whedon once. He has wonderful moves. One of his best moves was creating the Buffy universe. All characters in this story belong to him.
Author's notes: Xander and Willow decide it's time to fix it, though they aren't really sure what "it" is.
Notes: That's strange, I just titled this story and now am realizing it is also the title of a Sarah McLachlan album. Spooky. This story is dedicated to take-out chicken salads.
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Touch
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The small, smoky club was teeming with people, colliding off of each other as they made their way toward friends. On the dance floor couples clung to each other, swaying to private rhythms. And on the stage, the band played the same songs they played every show, the singer calling up his best rock star imitation while the rest of the band looked bored.
He sat alone in the shadows watching her.
The small table at which she sat was situated directly under a flashing blue strobe, which cast an unearthly glow about her pale form. Chin resting on her hands, she stared at the stage intently, oblivious to the looks she received. Not just from him. While she was not an obvious beauty, she had an unlearned way of carrying herself that drew people to her. Not to protect her, or romance her, but just to be near her.
He couldn't pinpoint the moment she changed from naïve child to the confident woman sitting before him. He supposed it had something to do with all the things they had seen, the friends they had lost, even the constant fear for their own lives. It was impossible not to change.
There was a time when he meant everything to her. It had frightened him, so he pretended not to know. But that didn't mean he was unaware. Again, he was unable to pinpoint the time that changed. Was it before or after he strayed from her? Before or after someone else noticed how special she was?
He sighed and sank deeper into his chair, pulling his jacket closer around him. He felt ridiculous doing this. There was a time when they spent every waking moment together, and now he was uncomfortable around her. He knew why. His instincts told him to reach for her, always reach for her. But he knew how the feel of her burned him, as well as how he burned her, and the feelings were not the same. He clung to the desire, and she was still clinging to the pain they had caused.
So he hid from her, watching, waiting for her to remember what it was like before this. He wondered if she was thinking that now, and he watched her face for a sign. She looked almost content. He felt certain she wasn't fully happy, though. How could she be happy when part of her was missing? He was missing. And he had been a part of her forever.
She moved to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear, turning to glance about the room before turning her face back to the band. A small, blond boy caught her eye from the stage and her eyes widened just slightly in acknowledgement. But she did not smile, and somehow that made him feel better.
It was a rare opportunity he had to watch her like this. They were so often in a large group, a group that was sensitive to every word and look he exchanged with her. It exhausted him. So often these days he found himself staring at her, admiring the grace with which she moved, the dip of her collarbone, the delicate shell of her ear. He wanted to hold her and trace the lines of her body with his hands. He needed to.
He knew what he had to do to fix what was wrong between them. It had hit him one afternoon in the library after three long weeks of trying to figure out what was wrong in the first place. They had kissed, more than once. He had held her in his arms, felt her body pressed against his; the memory was killing him. And while he couldn't be sure what it had meant to her, he knew that for him it was like finding the calm in the storm. Finally, something had made sense as the rest of the world struggled and tore at itself to survive. With her, he could be anything. So while he didn't know, couldn't possibly know, what had happened to the girl who had once loved him fiercely, he was positive he had to fix it.
He had to touch her. It felt like ages since she had admonished him for his casual caresses, and he had been careful not to take that liberty since then. He had wanted to. His itched with want. But instead he made mistakes. Every day he let them drift farther apart from one another. And by the time he committed the ultimate betrayal, the space between them was too large for him to reach her.
So he had to touch her. Because he believed she would feel the importance of closing the distance just as he did. If he could just show her how she made him feel, she would open up to him. It was that simple.
Xander wondered if she would understand.
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She had been sitting alone at her table all evening feeling his eyes on her.
In another time, another place, she would have gone to him. She had spent most of her life beside him, and it hurt her now to know they had come to a place where that wasn't possible. It made her throat tighten and her eyes sting just to think about it. And when she felt the urge to cry, she felt a similar urge to bury her head in his neck and feel his arms about her. That wouldn't do at all.
All this distance made her feel alone. "Well, you are kind of sitting by yourself," an inner voice said. But that was an outward feeling, and the loneliness she felt reached all the way into her soul. It had been there even before she sent him away; perhaps that was the reason she had shoved him out of her life. Maybe she thought things would make more sense. They didn't, though.
It wasn't that she couldn't experience happiness. There were times when she was almost satisfied with the boy she had chosen over him. After all, he had spent years pretending she didn't love him. He'd denied her feelings. Would it have been right to just excuse that because he thought he wanted her? That just didn't seem fair to her. So she had chosen someone else. And that person told her every day how much she meant to him, how special she was and how good she made him feel.
But she still missed him, a feeling she felt so much more knowing he was just two tables away, undoubtedly thinking about her.
She leaned forward and traced a finger through the watery circles left by her drink. Around and over she swirled the liquid until she fell into a pattern. His name. It seemed years since she had practiced writing their names together in her geometry notebook. Connected with hearts and other conjunctions, her name with his last, all the thoughts private except for the paper on which she expressed them. The pages always ended up in tiny shreds, pressed into the very bottom of the most hidden trash can she could find. Her fear was that he wouldn't want to be her friend anymore when he knew.
That hadn't really happened, though, had it? Because by the time he knew for sure, when she said the words aloud, it was because he had moved on once again to someone who wasn't her. And he had needed her to assure HIM that their relationship would be okay. She didn't think that was fair either, so she never gave him the assurance he needed. As it turned out, their relationship had never really been okay since then.
That knowledge tore at her as she wiped away the scribbles on the table. Maybe if she could have forgiven him, maybe if they would have talked about it, maybe if she hadn't been drawn to someone who freely gave her what no one else ever had. Sometimes getting what we want is just proof that we don't really want it, she thought with a glance toward the stage. Sometimes being loved isn't perfect, not when it isn't the right person.
This was an argument she often had with herself. Were there feelings other than love clouding her judgement? Did she settle for something warm and comfortable because she was scared to take a leap of faith? Sometimes, settling into her boyfriend's arms, she felt content. She knew he wasn't going anywhere, she knew he had fallen in love with her, and he had shown her an infinite amount of respect and tenderness. And she loved him, in a way that made her smile to herself.
But then sometimes she remembered what it was like to be in someone else's arms. Was he thinking that, too, sitting alone in the darkness? When they were together she felt on fire. It was a slow, sure burn. One she hadn't known long enough to determine whether or not it would consume her. Or whether or not she wanted it to.
She thought that maybe, if she could just touch him again, everything would become clear. She had missed the feel of him since the night she told him in this very room that he had to stop touching her. He had not only withdrawn from her physically at that moment, but emotionally as well, and their relationship had been on a downward spiral ever since. From friends to barely conversing to two people who didn't understand each other at all. And then there had been his involvement with the other Slayer, an action that cut her so deeply she was sure all her feelings for him would go away.
Of course, they didn't.
So maybe she would be able to tell, just from a touch, whether or not she had made the right choice. It seemed simple enough. All her life she had been reaching for him, always reaching for him, so in her confusion it seemed like the natural thing to do. She would touch him. Just one more time.
Willow knew somehow that he would understand.
April 1999