Cleveland, while grittier, was not unlike Sunnydale. Every night there were vampires and demons to slay—stupid amounts of them. He'd almost forgotten what a real hellmouth could be like, how they flocked to it like moths to a porch-light. Mowing them down provided him a physical satisfaction, familiar and easeful in the flex and thrust. In the shabby rowhouse where Faith lived with her crew, there were girls who stared at him or ignored him or flirted with him or tried to provoke him into a display of fang, or a real fight. He had a rickety cot in the basement, right next to the furnace, which was delightfully cozy for an undead thing like him. Faith visited him there in the early afternoons, which was when they were both first awake, logy and slow. She brought down coffee and shared her smokes. They talked about Angel. Faith's perspective on him was singular—he'd never betrayed her, there was no ambiguity in her past with him. He'd turned her from an enemy into an ally; he'd believed in her when no one else had. She related how he visited her in prison, and when she talked about that, she became almost soft.

"You reminded him of himself. He wanted to spare you any more of it. I mean, the dark."

"Well, duh." Faith chuckled, lit another cigarette off the end of the first. "He sure did know his murder and his atonement. Son of a bitch ... he fucked up there at the end, though." She shook her head. "For his kid, I get that ... but still."

"Hard to wrap my mind round that. Darla with child. Angel with a son. That boy better turn out to be worthwhile. Traded off some good people for him." He thought of Fred, how she'd suffered, how Wesley suffered—he could identify with that, the torment of love unanswered, love answered too late. Thought of Angel's choices, the rottenness of his options.

His dreams, after nights of whirling dust and bottles of Jack, were rich and populous. It took a while for him to realize that they were all centered on the far past. Asleep he found himself a child again, a schoolboy, a student, a young clerk in Whitehall, hoping to rise to confidential secretary, to marry for love. Always struggling and caught off guard, lots of running around, frustration, storm. But he never dreamed about Buffy. It was as if his sleeping mind was refusing to let him off so easy; he wasn't going to be able to process the recent past through the medium of dreams.

He thought of her most while he was on the hunt. While he fought, because combat was Buffy's medium—every one of her moves and expressions and quips was stored in his memory, coming back to him in a fertile rush when he was in action—it was as a fighter that he'd first come to love her. As an adversary.

But all of that was from before, from Sunnydale. It was harder to deal with the last few months; those events at the castle made a sort of pentimento, realities and scenes piled on top of each other, their distinctions running together. He'd lived them all but in the absence of his whole self they seemed curiously flat, denuded of full meaning.

He'd fallen in love with her right away when she'd fetched him in L.A., a powerful, attractive stranger. He'd set out to seduce her, to woo her, and succeeded with an ease he'd never experienced with anyone else, as man or vampire. Of course she'd been primed, because she loved him already, or so she asserted. He believed her, but still wasn't sure. The way she'd come to him, when he was shut off from himself, troubled him, and at the same time he was troubled by his own trouble—it was wrong to blame her, to be suspicious. What chance had he given her to come to him any other way? He'd kept his existence a secret.

Slayer had for once followed her heart, and hadn't he wanted her to do that from the very first? Hadn't he yearned and fantasized about that for years?

He knew what he felt wasn't fair, but it dug at him.

He felt embarrassed, churlish, recalling how she'd taken his blows. How eagerly she'd made love to him. Her pleasure at being bitten. At being submissive in bed.

Could all that be all right? Or was it—the idea dug its claws into his mind and could not be torn loose—was it that her painful career had so warped her that she was ruined for a real man, real love? Her desire for him the principal symptom of a terrible, an unfortunate, pathology?

One afternoon in the fourth week of his stay, when the house was quiet and empty, Faith came on to him on his cot, beside the ticking furnace.

She took him by surprise, engaging his tongue, her kiss tasting of tobacco and tabasco, her hand possessing his groin, squeezing him through his jeans.

He lifted it off, and held it. She was staring into his eyes, her face so close it filled his vision. Breath snuffed from her distended nostrils. He brought her hand to his lips, kissed the fingers one by one. "You're a good girl, Faith, an' it's not that I wouldn't like to afford you—both of us—the pleasure—"

She smiled then.

"Know you belong to Buffy," she said.

"Do you?"

She cuffed him—gently, for her—on the shoulder. "Mostly I did this to remind you."

"You imagined I forgot?"

Faith smiled, shook her head. "Guys are situational. They forget what's not right in front of their nose. But you ... you might be unusual in that respect."

"Dunno. Tryin' to make some sense of myself, which I've never been much cop at."

"You're probably thinking too much."

"Never been much good at thinking at all."

"B thinks too much. She was always such a goody-two-shoes. Hell, if it was me for you back in Sunnyd, I'd have been on you like white on rice and I wouldn't have let go."

"You ever been in love, Faith?" He knew she'd been with the slayer's son for a little while after the apocalypse, but he'd left Cleveland, and Faith never mentioned him.

She frowned, and started to shake her head.

"You loved Angel," Spike said. It felt a little cruel to say it out loud.

"That was never going to happen. There's no call to be talking about it."

"Yeah, all right. Just ...."

"B was crazy about you. Do you still not get that? I think you still don't get that." Faith turned his head so he was looking straight at her. "In her house. Those days before the battle. How she looked at you. How she didn't look at you when everyone was all together. It was obvious. Sure, she was freaked out about what was coming, but my God Spike, you were on her mind twenty-four-seven, and I'm not talking about how she was counting on you as a fighter."

"Maybe I didn't know."

"You sure didn't." Faith was certain.

"Was focused more on what I had to do. On makin' sure she got to walk away."

"We can be such morons." She picked at a hole in her jeans. "Everything makes perfect sense, when it's too damn late to do anything about it."

Later that day, he went up into the house, borrowed a phone from one of the girls, and sent a text. Talk f2f? Meet Glasgow or w-ever u say. Spike.

The phone purred as he was handing it back. Its owner answered it, then held it out to him.

The sound of her voice poured down his spine, made him squirm, heated his flesh.

"Spike?" It was a long time since he'd been on the phone with her; he didn't realize how little-girlish she sounded through the tiny speaker. "Spike."

"Slayer." He swallowed around a sudden knot in his throat. "Buffy. How are you, pet?" He was aware suddenly that the girl whose phone he held was staring at him, that she was blushing, and that that was because there were tears starting down his cheeks. He turned his back on her, sidled into the corner. "Shouldn't you be sleepin' now, love?" He'd never meant to talk to her this way at all, but here he was all flushed with tenderness, the endearments slipping by all his censors.

"Do you really think I can sleep, when you're so far away?"

He couldn't think of an answer.

Buffy said, "Can I come there? Can I come now? I'm going to go wake up Willow."

He tried to speak, but his throat was closed.

"Spike? Are you still on?"

"Just to talk, yeah?"

A little silence on her end. Stubborn, sad, angry, he couldn't tell. His head was spinning.

"Come on then, Slayer. I'll put on a pot of coffee, meanwhile."