Rating: FRT-13 (Fan Rated Teen-13, suitable for older teens)
Summary: Willow becomes involved with Spike and Angel.
Feedback: Please. Don't make me beg. It's so undignified.
Distribution: If you have permission to archive my previous stories, you may have this. Otherwise, please ask first.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to Joss and a bunch of other people who are not now and have never been me.
Author's Notes: This is written in honour of the birthday of Femailofthespecies. I'm sorry I couldn't write fluff, as you requested, Femail, but no one is assaulted and no one dies. For me, that's pretty darn fluffy. I hope you enjoy it. I am posting it early so it doesn't get lost in the tidal wave of fics you are sure to receive.
Author's Notes Two: Thank you to Emmy and Tonya for the great advice and support in the writing of this fic.
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Willow lay quietly between her two lovers. Lovers. That was a funny word. She loved only one, who loved the other, who loved her...it was also so terribly tangled and confused and almost heartbreaking.
She'd underestimated Spike, underestimated his cunning, and underestimated his patience and willingness to research. Who knew he was actually *reading* Giles' arcane texts? Certainly she hadn't known. And if she had been aware he was plotting something, it probably would have made no difference anyway. Because she loved him.
She had loved him since that long-ago day in the factory when he'd cried on her shoulder for his faithless Drusilla. It was a hopeless, forlorn sort of love. One she had known Spike would never return, not now that he seemed so enthralled with Buffy. But even while she was crying for Tara and jumping through hoops to stay away from magick and win back her shy ex-lover, Willow loved Spike. Even while she thought she had no chance of ever even catching his eye.
Yet now he had suggested going to Los Angeles and letting Angel help her through her withdrawal So she had agreed, a part of her heart soaring at the idea of Spike wanting to help her and even allowing herself to hope that it meant there was a chance he would someday come to share her feelings.
But he had a plan, Spike did, as always, he had a plan; and along with Willow and his portable CD player, he was taking something else to L.A....knowledge. Knowledge that he planned to use to get what, or rather *who*, he really wanted.
Willow cursed her own gullibility. She should have known that first night that there was something *off* about Spike's attentions. But she was so ecstatic at the thought of Spike truly wanting her that she ignored the warning bells going off at the back of her mind, let him seduce her, let him claim her. And it had been glorious, so glorious that she chose to ignore the odd look in Spike's eyes when he touched her, to brush off the way he seemed a little *too* fond of being at his most affectionate towards her in front of Angel.
After a week, though, she learned that her instincts had been on target when she found out Spike's real agenda. He had never loved Buffy. What he really wanted was to be back in Angel's bed, and he was willing to use Willow to get there. Seems Spike knew something that *she* had never known, that Angel had loved her since he'd returned from Hell. And Spike had discovered, after months of painstaking research, that, because she was the one who had returned the dark vampire's soul, he could never lose it in her arms.
Ah, but now she belonged to Spike. So if Angel wanted Willow...
And that was how it had begun, and continued, and would always be. As much as Willow hated Spike, she still loved him with all her heart. And, she consoled herself, at least he felt the same pangs when his Grand-Sire's cock was buried in him that she felt whenever Spike was inside of her. The same anguish that Angel must feel when she made love with him...the ache of being second-best and not the one that your love *truly* wanted. It occurred to Willow that at least, if Spike was wrong and Angel's soul *could* be lost with her, it wouldn't be now anyway. None of them were happy. But none of them would ever make a move to escape. After all, they were each used to making do, terribly, frighteningly used to settling for a shadow of what they dreamt of.
And, as Willow drifted off into blessed oblivion, she knew that, even if she had known what Spike's plans had been, she would have done nothing to avert them. What she had with Spike might be the crumbs of the banquet of her dreams, but they were better than nothing at all. And when she awoke, she would remember to be kinder to Angel. Even a beggar might be generous to a starving man.
The End.