"I wish that Xander Harris never again knows the touch of a woman!" Cordelia said gleefully, sentencing Xander to a life of misery filled with constant and eternal torment.

Or at least, that was what Xander imagined happened. He wasn't actually around to hear it, sitting blissfully with Willow and Buffy a few hundred yards away across the courtyard, unaware that his life was about to become awful forever.

His first hint came not five minutes later, when they decided to hit the Bronze (totally deserved, for having saved the world yet again yesterday), and when he offered Willow a hand to help her up, some force zinged right through it and pushed it back behind his head.

"Practicing your moves, Xander?" Buffy said, smiling that biting-back smile she used whenever she thought she was being particularly punny. "Because that just about moved me to tears. And not the good kind."

"Haha," Xander said. "I'm not sure what just happened. It was like some force was keeping me from touching Will."

At that, Buffy frowned. "You'd think the powers of darkness would give us a day or so to recoup before they hit again, wouldn't you." She sighed. "I guess not. Well, now there's all the more reason to hit the Bronze before something super sinister hits us."

Later, Xander would look back on that first day and wonder how he could have been so stupid, and also be slightly embarrassed by the lack of female contact that allowed him to overlook the development of disaster for so long. But that day, the Bronze was just as Bronze-y and dance-y as usual, and Xander was able to forget about the weird zing that left his arm feeling like it did after you hit your elbow really hard, like any moment it might just pop right off.

Not for long though, because the next morning it happened again when he slipped on some spilled something-he-didn't-want-to-look-too-closely-at in the cafeteria and fell into a tiny freshman, who didn't even try to move out of his way as he timber-ed toward her.

But it turned out she didn't need to, because before he could hit her, Xander's whole body tipped back upright, like he was some sort of reverse pendulum, and he stumbled backwards.

Larry caught him. "You okay, Harris?" he asked, smiling genially and cradling Xander under the armpits.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," Xander said hurriedly. "Thanks, Larry."

Then again in math, when he borrowed a pencil from the girl who sat next to him and, the moment their fingers almost brushed, found his hand flying across to the other side of his desk, barely managing to keep hold of the pencil.

"Something weird is definitely going on," he announced, dropping his backpack on the table in the library after school.

Giles and Willow looked up from perusing a dusty looking book and the desktop computer, respectively, and stared at him, and it was only then that Xander realized that he was breathing heavily and unconsciously flexing his fingers, as if readying himself for them to fly around of their own volition again.

"What is it, Xander?" Giles asked hesitantly. "And would you like to sit down? Take deep breaths, perhaps?"

"No, I would not," Xander said. "But I would like you to tell me why it is that I can't touch girls anymore!"

Giles looked taken aback, and Buffy snorted back a laugh from her position, legs swinging, atop the counter.

"What was that?" Giles asked. "I mean to say, what do you mean when you say you can't touch girls anymore?"

"Does it give you an icky feeling?" Buffy asked, mock seriously. "Is it the cooties you're afraid of, Xand?"

Xander couldn't work up a proper retort and besides, that wasn't what mattered at the moment. "I'm serious," he said. "It's like, it's like there's some sort of force field keeping us apart or something."

Now Giles stood up, and began walking toward him, tapping a pen on his chin. "Interesting. And it's only women, you say?"

"Yes," Xander huffed. "I can touch you just fine." He reached out and tapped Giles on his sweater-vested shoulder.

Giles caught his hand and examined it. "Well, there doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with you, that I can see."

"Well, no, there wouldn't be," Xander said, starting to get angry now at how dense they were all being. "This is obviously a spell that some evildoer has designed to torture me!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Buffy roll hers, smiling fondly, and tried to quell his irritation.

"Hmm," Giles said. "Perhaps you're right. Though that would be quite…inventive of an evildoer, I must say. But let's test it out. You say you can't touch anyone who is female."

"That's right," Xander said. "See?" He strode over to Buffy, arms outstretched, as if to push her over the edge of the counter. She shrieked and held up her hands to ward him off, but Xander could have told her that was a waste of energy. When he was still half a step away, it was like he'd hit a wall. He was braced for it this time, so he didn't fall backward, but still, he definitely couldn't move forward.

Giles took off his glasses, polished them on the sweater vest, then put them on again. "Very interesting," he said, stepping closer. "You can't get any nearer to her than that?" Xander pushed his hands forward, braced against the invisible wall, and came no closer.

"Well, it does appear to be supernatural in origin, whatever it is," Giles declared, and Xander put his hands down, then sank to the floor and leaned his back against the counter.

"But who would have done this to you?" Willow asked, sounding worried, and, looking at her face, Xander suddenly knew without a doubt who it had been.

"I'll be right back," he said, and dashed out of the library.

Of course, it was almost five o'clock, and Cordelia had left school hours ago, so he had to wait until the next day—suffering though an extremely awkward encounter when his mother tried to pass him the mashed potatoes at dinner and he accidentally launched them right at her—to be sure.

To be continued...