"Your color is beautiful, Pudge." Her warmth instantly awakened goose bumps on his skin, and he stared at her as she pulled the covers back up around them, his breath and about a thousand words caught in his throat. "I knew it wouldn't take you long to find it."
"Cee," he managed to choke out.
"Sorry for scaring you. You looked so adorable, zonked out with all these wrappers on your belly - I didn't want to wake you."
He just stared at her.
"But...since you are awake..."
His eyes involuntarily clenched shut.
"Thank you," she told him, her voice wavering. "Thank you so much, Pudge. I wouldn't be...you were amazing. You...you saved me."
"You're welcome," he managed.
"And I am...I'm so, so sorry. I'm so sorry for what I did to you."
He had to start over a few times before he could croak, "It's okay. I know it wasn't you."
"But I...I was there. I was there, and I couldn't stop it." Tears glimmered on her cheeks in the moonlight.
"I thought you didn't remember?"
Cee rolled her eyes. "That's what I told them so they wouldn't worry. But I remember. I remember all of the horrible things I said to you, everything I did, everything I-"
Xander couldn't stand it. He wrapped his arms around her, enfolding her in an embrace. "It's okay," he told her simply. Silent sobs wracked her body as she clutched him, and he stroked her hair.
Finally she pulled away and wiped her eyes with her fingertips. "There's more."
He swallowed hard and made the words come out clear. "You have nothing to apologize for. You were possessed. None of it was you. I'm just...I'm just glad you're okay."
She gave him a watery smile. "Not that. I'm sorry for everything. I'm so used to knowing what everyone else is thinking, sometimes I forget that people don't know what I'm thinking, too. It never occurred to me that you didn't know. So...I'm sorry for not explaining. I'm sorry for misleading you."
As surely as he'd been expecting this, the pain was still nigh unbearable. It took him a moment to regain his breath before he could respond. "You don't have to apologize. I mean, I appreciate your being honest, but...I know. I couldn't even...even with Ling's help...I couldn't do anything... I'm a mess, I know it. I never really expected you to..."
Confusion and pain were not emotions he'd expected to see on her face now. "What?"
"I know that you don't...have feelings for me. Like that," he muttered. "You didn't mislead me. It's okay."
"Oh, Pudge. I most definitely misled you." She kissed him then, gently, and he couldn't stop himself from twining his fingers through her hair and inhaling deeply as her scent warmed and deepened with their contact.
But then he pulled back. "What are you doing?" he asked, his voice breaking.
"Trying to correct a huge mistake," she told him. "I thought it was obvious, but I never just came out and told you, and I should have. I like you, Pudge. A lot. I'm so sorry I made you think otherwise."
"But-but...you...but I'm...I'm so fat," he sputtered helplessly.
Cee bit her lip and glanced down at his body, then back up at his face. "I know," she said simply. "I like that you are."
His voice failed him and he mouthed the word "what."
"I love that you're fat. You're so big, and soft..." She reached out a hand towards his belly, but let it drop back into her lap. "I think you're gorgeous."
Xander stared at her, and felt his chest begin to tighten and his breath begin to catch.
Her eyes filled with tears again. "I'm so sorry, Pudge. I should have told you sooner, then they wouldn't have been able to make you think that I - it's just - it knew everything when it was inside me and it made it seem like...no, it's not just that. I was afraid to tell you. I was afraid I'd upset you or that you'd think I was crazy or...I don't even know. But I should have told you, because then those demon bastards wouldn't have been able to use something I love about you to hurt you." She wiped at her eyes angrily before continuing. "I know what they did. I saw everything, everything here in the basement, and everything in then bathroom at your dorm. That wasn't me, but I saw it later. None of it would have happened if I -"
"Stop," he said. "You're telling me that...that the reason those demons tried to use my...size...to mess with me is because you secretly...like it?"
Cee nodded, her face shadowed in misery.
"It's not...it's not you, I mean...I...it's...it's more..." He clammed up, afraid to admit his earlier revelation aloud. But as her face lightened hopefully in front of him, he realized he didn't have to.
"I know," she began, her tone delicate, "that you've realized some stuff, and it's still pretty new for you. You don't need to say anything about it at all, if you don't want to. I am really glad, though...I hope this means you can start being nicer to yourself... Anyway, I just...I can't help feeling responsible."
After a moment, he replied, "It's not you. They used what I hoped for and...the impossibility of it...to hurt me. It's not your fault."
Cee's fingers brushed his cheek. "There are a lot of things to unpack in that statement."
A deep, shuddering breath left him then. "I know." He locked eyes with her, losing himself in the way the moonlight caused her irises to shimmer electric green.
"And I hope you realize now that it's not impossible."
Xander squeezed his eyes shut, some part of him still trying to protect himself from what he still believed would be an inevitable backlash over his deviant desires.
"Deviant?" She snorted.
He opened his eyes and looked at her guiltily.
Cee sighed with a smile. "Pudge, I know what I like, and I don't give a shit who thinks it's 'deviant' or anything else. And neither should you. Like I told you the last time I was actually myself, other people are usually too worried about themselves to care about what everyone else is doing, and the ones who do care what you're doing fall into one of two camps: those who actually care about and love you, and those who are just trying to deflect the attention from themselves and how genuinely awful they are. And fuck them, seriously. What matters is what you think, and if it makes you happy and makes you feel good and brings you some peace, how can that be bad?"
A wry smile turned up the corners of his mouth. "I wish I could have known you when we were younger."
"So do I. But I think we can make up for lost time." She reached over to tuck his hair behind his ear. Her fingers trailed down over his soft jaw and double chin and kept drifting south, over his shoulder and down to his upper arm, where her hand stopped and lightly squeezed his flesh.
"I..." he began.
Cee looked at him questioningly.
Xander swallowed past the dryness in his throat. "I really like you, Cee."
Her nose crinkled adorably as a huge grin spread across her face. "I'm so happy to hear you say that. Like, stupidly happy." She wriggled herself closer to him, her hand still lightly grasping the softness of his arm. "Can...can we snuggle?"
Xander laughed. "I never thought I'd hear you sound so tentative."
She looked down, almost shyly, still smiling. "I've been told that I come on a little strong. Thought I'd try toning it down a bit. But really...I don't want to make you uncomfortable."
"I...appreciate that. Um, yeah, we can...we can snuggle."
Cee gently pushed his shoulder until he was laying on his back, looking up at her apprehensively. She scooted in close to him and laid her head on the space where his arm connected to his shoulder and fit her body into the round curves of his side. She started to lift her arm but stopped, and he felt her unspoken request for permission. Instead of verbalizing it, he took her hand in his own and placed it on the squishy mound of his belly, shuddering slightly as her slim fingers pressed into his yielding flesh.
"Are you sure this is okay?" she whispered.
It was more than okay. He could feel the steady pulse of her energy, see the brilliant emerald of her aura melding with the indigo of his own, smell the fire and the sea meeting in the most intoxicating brew of salt and skin and rightness as they lay there, the individual rhythms of their breath slowly syncing. The heat of her hand invoked a matching warmth deep in his belly, and he exhaled shakily.
Cee did the same, and clutched him tighter. "This," she whispered, "was more than worth waiting for."
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