“I knew it! I knew it!” he began to scream at the top of his lungs. Faith watched him, her expression changing every few seconds as she tried to keep control of the situation with her eyes. People had stopped to stare at him. “Spike.” She said nodding to the people around them. He looked up for the first time noticing what his outburst was causing. “Calm down” her hands signaled for the crowd to move along. “C’mon move along people” she rolled her eyes. “They’re always looking for a good flare-up here.” She paused looking up at him while he fiddled with a new cigarette. “You smoke more than me”. He nodded, slipping the stick between his lips. “I can’t help it,” was all he could say. “Can’t help what? The smoking or the outburst over Buffy’s new beau?” there was a hint of laughter in her voice.
Spike tilted his head up looking over the crowd. “They’re still dating?” he questioned, shocked. “Well…” and her voice trailed off. “They weren’t but…”. He scratched his head, looking utterly confused, waiting for the rest of the story. “I’ve been gone—I was in Mexico rounding up another slayer, you know shitting around, wasting time. I come here in June and she’s shacked up with this guy.” She paused, looking around at nothing particular. “Then, here’s the kicker. This guy is the fucking Immortal. I mean I know Buffy like’s em old and shit, but this guy is old!”
He takes in the story like a glass of water letting it trickle down with no taste at all. He spits out a piece of tobacco from the cigarette and continues listening. “I don’t say anything because you know how B and I are and I know she wouldn’t listen to me anyway. Not like I have the best relationship advice to give.” Faith slants her eyebrows up and frowns a little as her own thoughts begin to take over. “Anyway I leave again for another trip, this time to South America. So while I’m there I almost get killed. This guy put some sort of hit out on me. So I get trapped in this bar where there’s a good twenty something vampires and a bunch of demons I’ve never seen before.” She pulls out a cigarette from her pack and plasters it to her lips, flicking the lighter gracefully, in a way Spike watches with a certain desire. It wasn’t sexual but the connection was there, an understanding between them that they were alike.
He was contemplating the story while she inhaled thick smoke into her lungs and began to speak again as the smoke tilted outwards. “So I’m standing there thinking I can get the ones to my sides, grab a leg from the table and stab the ones in front and as I’m about to move fast enough to grab the table, flip it over and break the leg right,” a cloud of smoke billows out from her lips, “Buffy shows up right at that moment with a few other slayers. Not a lot. Three at the most. So we get all of them and we’re standing there in a pile of ash and Buffy tells me she found out what was happening because she heard The Immortal on the phone with someone. And who actually calls themselves “the immortal”?” Faith flung her fingers into quotation marks.
Spike frowned. “That’s what I keep saying”, he shook his head, leaning his body against the brick wall behind him. “Get this… Buffy comes up with the idea that she’s going to pretend she has no idea about the whole thing. She flew back right away and left me and the other slayers to hide out for a little while. She wanted to make it look like she’d been in London. She flies back to London, meets him the next day in Italy. He acts like everything is just five by five so she does too. In the meantime she’s sleeping with the enemy”.
Faith watched Spike’s face as it twisted into disgust and then resentment. He began to think his death never really mattered to her or even his undead life for that matter. Faith, sensing his questions and even stupidity said, “She still loves you.” It wasn’t a lie and although she had been avoiding bringing it up at all, she knew it was the truth.
The air was thick with emotions that were being disguised with coldness and as bodies melted by them every few seconds, he felt himself become more panicked by the minute. And in a fit of dread his lips opened and his tongue moved. “Stop. We have to find her”. She closed her lips and threw another cigarette to the ground. This time lifting the heal of her boot to smash the smoke out. He threw the cigarette he had been sucking on as if it were candy and slid it behind his own heel. He placed the palms of his hands against his face hoping to gain some sort of clarity. If only his eyes could see straight, if he weren’t so blinded by his jealousy along with his love. He stuck his hand in his duster pocket, once again bringing out the piece of paper that Lorne had given him. “I have this”, he said handing it over to Faith. She unfolded the page looking it over. “It’s on the other side of town. C’mon lets get a cab”, she said, rushing for the next red cab that came shuttling down the street. She stepped in front of it without any concern of causing an accident or killing herself in the process. He couldn’t help but smile a little, at how much her love for Buffy had changed in a year.