FicWad

The white of the ceiling matches the blank emptiness in Wesley's thoughts when he first opens his eyes. There's a half second of foreboding, of feeling like everything is wrong, and then Lilah's fingertips brush his arm and sweep away the confusion as though it had never been.

"Morning," she whispers in his ear and he rolls over to face her, losing himself in her kisses.

Vaguely he hears the bathroom door open and then the bed is shifting as Faith crawls up into the narrow space between him and Lilah.

"Hey, hey!" Faith says, slipping one arm around each of them and leaning in to share their kiss. "None of that unless I get some too."

This is exactly how it's meant to be, Wesley thinks as Faith wriggles onto her back and smiles up at him, at them.

"Never without you," Lilah answers, tracing her fingers under the hem of Faith's tank top and making Faith writhe.

Wesley stops Faith's low moan with his mouth, adjusting the kiss from Lilah's languorous style to Faith's take-no-prisoners approach, and it's not long before the three of them are an intimate tangle of limbs on rumpled sheets. It doesn't matter anymore, who does what to whom--Faith's hand on Wesley's cock in Lilah's cunt under Faith's mouth; they're like three facets of the same person now.

~ ~ ~

Lilah reaches for the oven mitt, smiling over at Faith and Wes where they sit at the breakfast bar, half-full glasses of orange juice in front of them, Wes quizzing Faith for her quantum physics exam. As Lilah opens the oven door, there's a flash of light and then darkness.

She doesn't want to say it, but she can't stop herself. She has no control over her mouth--not over the loving smile she can feel pasted on, nor over the words she knows her lips are going to form.

"Hey, hon? Oven light just went out. I need a bulb from the cellar." She sees him freeze, as he does every day, and she's thankful that he's only got a mild sense of discomfort about the cellar, that he can't remember from day to day what happens there.

"Should be some in the hall closet," Wes says.

"Just the regular ones. Little ones are downstairs."

"Faith...Faith was getting ready to tell me about the three flavors and colors of quarks...."

It's always the same. If Lilah has to hear about probability clouds and gluons again, she thinks she might scream. Except that she can't; she can't do anything other than follow the eternal script.

She steps up behind him, putting her hand on his shoulder. "I kinda need it right now."

"I'll be right back."

She watches him reach for the doorknob, watches him hesitate, and hates him for making her care. That's her torture, her punishment: having to go through the same motions every day, with no semblance of free will. "They're on that shelf," she says, "where we keep those thingies."

He closes the door behind himself and she counts down in her head. She can't hear his screams, but she feels them deep down in her bones. What did I do? I'll do whatever you want! No, no!

She doesn't really need the countdown; when it's time, the words are forming in her mouth without any effort on her part. "Hon, what are you doing down there?" There's no answer. There's never an answer. "Faith, would you go and see what Wes is doing?"

She's not sure why Faith seems more frightened than Wes, or why Faith's fear rips at her insides more, but the click of the cellar door echoes loud in the empty kitchen and Lilah wishes desperately that she could cry.

fait accompli

A/N: This was written for Katemonkey for the polyficathon. I'm not at all sure my original attempt was what she wanted, so I thought I'd give her a second one off her list. Thanks to Vegetariansushi for drive-by beta; any remaining flaws are my own