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“I just - I th-think this may have been an accident,” Willow stutters as Buffy kisses softly up the side of her neck.
“What do you mean?” Buffy moves her hair so that she can place another kiss right on Willow’s ear. Her tone is conversational, as if this is normal, as if she regularly plants her lips on her best friend while they’re alone in her bedroom.
Willow gulps. “I mean, the uh… the, you know. The kissing? I just think, it might be - ”
“Fun?” suggests Buffy, playing with a strand of Willow’s red hair, their faces only a breath apart. "All the rage these days? Good for your health?”
“ - because of a spell,” Willow admits. “Maybe… one that I cast? Accidentally? Well - not that the spell was an accident. But I didn’t mean it, you know… like this.”
Buffy settles back on her heels on the bed, pouting a bit. “Well, what kind of this did you mean it like?”
“Umm, sort of a, not-this-at-all kind?” At Buffy’s frown, Willow hastily amends: “I mean, it’s not that I don’t want you to kiss me. Except, I just want you to… not kiss me. Because of the spell.”
“So… you do want me to kiss you, just not right now, because right now I’m under a spell that makes me want to kiss you?” After a pause, Buffy adds, “Okay, if we’re playing the confuse-Buffy-game, you’re on the winning side right now.”
"Oh, Buffy.” Willow flutters her hands uncertainly, then holds them splayed palm-up in a beseeching gesture. “It just seems… wrong. If you’re gonna kiss me, I don’t want it to be because of a spell, you know?”
Buffy sighs. “Well, I’d say ‘what’s the diff,’ but I feel like that’s not gonna convince you. If we get rid of the spell-thingy, can we kiss in peace?”
“S-sure,” Willow says, heart pounding against her ribs so hard she feels dizzy. “Yeah.”
“A love spell?”
“Yes. No. Well, not a love spell on Buffy,” Willow clarifies, glancing toward the library door. Buffy stands on the other side of the little round window, waiting only half-patiently for the two magic-users to finish their talk. “It was supposed to be sort of, you know - ” She makes a vague gesture at herself. “To make me. Uh. Sort of more - girlfriendly? To give me a sort of - likeable-ness?”
Giles adjusts his glasses, peering at Willow over the top of a worn hardcover entitled The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft: Revised. “I see.” He jabs his finger at the page. “And this is the exact spell you used?”
She nods, and he snaps the book shut, setting it down on the table and removing his glasses to polish them on the hem of his coat.
“Well,” he says slowly, “there’s good news, and there’s… interesting news.”
“I hope the good news is that Buffy’s gonna be okay, and that there’s nothing to worry about, and - and that the interesting news is also good news,” Willow says, faintly.
“It’s a relatively simple charm, intended to draw romantic love and affection into the life of the user, and can easily be reversed with a bit of skilled abjuration, of which I happen to be a master. That’s the good news. As for the interesting news… well.” He puts his glasses back on. “I’m not sure how to put this delicately, but if this is the exact spell you used, then the recipient of the effects would have been… ahem.” He coughs lightly. “Whomever you find attractive.”
“Oh.” After a moment, Willow’s eyes widen. “Oh.”
“Not that it’s any of my business, and not that I want to be any more involved in any of this hormonal teenage nonsense than I’m already forced to be, but…” Giles pauses for a moment to look at her over the rims of his glasses. “Once we reverse this charm, I think that you and Buffy should probably have… a talk.”
“Will,” Buffy gently interrupts Willow’s third heartfelt apology, “I get it. You’re really, really sorry for accidentally making me like-like you. And, yeah, I’ll admit that it wasn’t ideal. Macking on you without your permission wasn’t really how I wanted to kick off the Buffy-and-Willow adventure. But if our ‘Magic Love Funk’ episode had a silver lining, it’s that we can skip a lot of The Awkward. So, you know. Let’s take advantage of that.”
Willow’s not sure if the fire alarm is going off or if her ears are just ringing. “T-take advantage?”
“Yeah. You know. Like, we get to skip the part where I ask you if you like girls. And then we get to skip the part where I ask if you would ever like this girl.” Buffy cocks her head expectantly. “So… want to just dive right in?”
“Dive right in?” Willow repeats weakly, feeling a little dizzy. She has a vivid phantom memory of Buffy’s lips on her neck, and imagines if Buffy had pushed her down on the bed, kissed down until there was no more skin to kiss and then begun peeling her clothes off to reveal more and more -
With a slight eyebrow lift that says she suspects where Willow’s mind has gone, Buffy dryly replies, "Relatively speaking. Like maybe we could start with a date?”
“A date!” Willow says. “Right! Dating is… that’s how you… dive. Right.”
Buffy’s smiling at her. “Sooo… that’s a yes?”
“Yes. Yep.”
“Good.” Taking her gently by the elbow, Buffy leans in and kisses her on the cheek. “It’s a date, then.”