The car ride to the apartment had been a trip and a half, even though it had only taken them all of about fifteen minutes to get from the diner to the apartment.  For whatever reason, Spike had rolled out of the wrong side of the bed that day and his Annoy Faye At All Costs meter was extremely high.  From ragging on her about her driving to assuming control of the radio presets no matter how much she told him to stop fucking with them, he unconsciously seemed bound and determined to make her life an official living hell.

He wasn't even consistent about it.  He switched on and off from trying to annoy her to death to trying to be halfway genial, and by the time she threw open the door to the apartment, Spike figured she was probably picturing him on the other side of the door, getting cracked in the nose.  Strangely enough, he felt kind of bad for being a jerk.

Well, not strangely enough.  That whole pesky conscience thing of his was telling him that he was being unnecessarily persistent in his efforts to be King of the Assclowns.  In order to get his conscience off his back, Spike decided to make a concentrated effort to be a bit nicer to the shrew.

Of course, he had gravitated to the first thing in the apartment that was the most familiar to him—the couch.  All couches, no matter where, no matter what shape, were always the things Spike was most comfortable with.  He'd spent enough time sleeping on them during his lifetime, it was only natural.  He sat there on it for a few minutes while Faye stormed off down the hallway without a single word, presumably to her room to change out of her work clothes.  After the couple minutes of getting comfortable about being in Faye's apartment, he got up and started to explore.

There was a really old television and a small stereo system hooked up directly in front of the couch, and Spike bent down to inspect Faye's music collection.  Some of it was decent, but he discovered that it was mostly a lot of newer electronica music and very, very old Earth music; probably made before even Faye had been born.  Other than the couch and the entertainment system, the living room looked pretty bare. 

There was a small kitchen table with three chairs sitting around it directly behind the couch, and a telephone sat on the kitchen counter, accompanied by a cat.  Spike couldn't help but suppress a grin when he took notice of the cat's markings—it was a tiger-striped cat.  The irony of it was not lost on him.  The cat, however, was a lot fatter than he ever pictured his cat alter-ego being.  It looked as if Faye had gotten into the habit of chronically overfeeding the pet.  The cat, for its part, blinked lazily at Spike and fell to cleaning its paws.

There was a large pile of undesignated shit (for lack of a better word) sitting in the corner near the front door; it appeared to be a jumble of boxes, clothes, and odds and ends.  With yet another suppressed grin, Spike noticed a very familiar white, heeled boot lying at the top of a pile of clothes in the larger pile.  The other one was nowhere to be seen. 

Finally his wanderings brought him to the kitchen.  In light of his new efforts to be kind of nice, he decided not to walk down the hallway that shot off from the living room—just yet, anyway.  Faye probably needed her space for a few minutes, lest she attack him and try to kill him.  The kitchen looked largely unused, except for the overflowing garbage can and the large pile of dishes in the sink.  The dishes appeared as if they hadn't been touched since the day Faye moved into the place. 

The refrigerator in particular caught Spike's attention when he finally got around to looking at it.  It was the spot of colour in the apartment, it seemed, since Faye had apparently stuck everything she had ever thought important on the surface with magnets.  There were a couple of bills, some receipts, and a list entitled "Ten Things That Men Need To Learn About Women". 

Figures Faye would have a list that went something like that, Spike mused, leaning closer to the fridge to fully inspect all the items stuck on it.  One of the things, upon closer inspection, revealed itself to be a very interesting picture drawn by Ed.  It was such a riot of colour and crayon scribbles that the lanky man couldn't even understand what the hell it was supposed to be.  The only thing that tipped him off about its origin was a messy scrawl in the corner, in periwinkle: FOR FAYE-FAYE.  LUV EDWARD (smiley)!

A cluster of pictures on the top corner of the freezer door caught Spike's eye next.  A strip of four photos, obviously from one of those little photo booth things, depicted Faye and an unfamiliar man making various silly faces and grins.  In spite of the fact that she was smiling or acting goofy in each of the four shots, Faye looked like hell.  There were giant dark smudges under her eyes, and she looked paler and thinner than usual.  There were a couple of photos that didn't really catch Spike's attention (although there was a particularly hilarious one of Jet, obviously caught off guard, wearing an apron and holding a pan of something with Ed latched onto his other arm). 

Suddenly—Holy shit, is that ME?  He resisted the urge to yank the snapshot off the freezer and study it closer, and instead settled for leaning in so close to it that the tip of his nose was almost touching it.  Indeed it was him, sitting on the couch on the Bebop, looking very hung-over, holding a prairie oyster in his hand.  Ein was lying on the couch next to him, and Faye was sitting in the armchair, looking up from a magazine of some sort.  Jet or Ed were nowhere to be seen, which led him to deduce that one of the two had taken the photo. 

He heard some noises coming from the living room and turned to see Faye scooping the tubby feline up into her arms, staring at him questioningly.  "What are you looking at?" she asked, scratching the cat behind its ears.

Spike pointed at the picture he had been staring at, and furrowed his brow.  "Where did this come from?" he asked, turning to look at the picture again.  "God.  I look so young.  And hung-over."

Faye walked over to inspect the picture for herself, even though she knew fully well which one he was talking about.  It was the only picture of Spike she'd ever known in existence.  "Oh, that.  I dunno.  I found that lying around on the Bebop after you di—after you left," she amended just in time, remembering how ridiculous it would sound to say that a man standing in front of her, very much alive, had gone off to die.  "I took it with me when I packed up and left.  I thought it was pretty damn funny."

He couldn't stop staring at it.  It was probably the first picture that he'd seen of himself in years.  He was readjusting to the shock of how funny one looks on film.  "I can't believe how young I look," he finally said, drawing back and shaking his head. 

Faye looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, and noticed that yes, perhaps, he did look quite a bit older.  There were lines present around his eyes and mouth, and his forehead that he had not worn when he had left two years ago to die.  He was, however, still as beautiful as she remembered him.  "Bah.  You're not old until you start going grey," she said, and then the irony of that particular statement coming out of her mouth hit her.  "…Like I'm one to talk.  I'm older than you are by about eighty years or something like that."

Spike blanched, and scratched self-consciously at the back of his mop of slightly curly green hair.  "Funny you should say that.  I found a grey hair the other day," he admitted, looking up at her almost shyly.  "I've been finding them consistently for about a year and a half now," he also admitted.

Faye didn't understand how someone who spent as little time in front of a mirror as Spike did could find a single grey hair, let alone how someone who had as much hair as he did could find one.  Miraculously, she herself had never found a grey hair.  She half expected that one day she would wake up and find that her body had suddenly remembered what age it was really supposed to be, and be all wrinkly and faded. 

"But hey, what the fuck, at least I've still got my hair," he said, looking up with a bright smile, suddenly.  "Jet was halfway bald by thirty or something crazy like that."

"Count your blessings," Faye said simply, and let the cat leap ungracefully from her arms with a small, visible puff of airborne fur.  She cleared her throat and turned away, suddenly decidedly uncomfortable by the lack of animosity in the conversation between them.  She never would figure out how Spike managed to switch from making you want to kill him to making you want to confide your life story to him in point five seconds flat.  "Yeah, so…this is my home.  Aren't you glad that you wasted your precious time to come look at my little hole in the wall?"

"Actually," he began, and then brushed past her and vaulted over the back of the couch nimbly, landing on his side, "yeah, I am.  I guess I was wondering how the other half lived."  He was silent for a moment while Faye lingered in the kitchen, wondering if he'd realized that by lying down on the couch that he had taken up all the sitting area in the living room besides the floor.  "I guess I wouldn't believe that you, of all people, Poker Alice-Shrew-Loudmouth-Gypsy-Queen had gone on to live an otherwise normal life."

"It's not normal," Faye replied before she could really think about what she was saying.  The cat brushed up against her bare legs, begging for attention.

A mop of unruly green hair and a pair of mismatched reddish brown eyes poked up above the back of the couch, and blinked.  "I missed something.  What's not normal about all of this?" he asked, a hand appearing as well to indicate the apartment around them.

"Everything," she said, and then after a moment of no thought, only her brain spooling, added: "You, especially."  Immediately afterward she bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood and make her hand clutch reflexively.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Spike's eyes and forehead stared at her over the couch for a second, and then disappeared from view, and a loud, knowing sigh was heard from the other side.  Then he popped up into a sitting position, scooting over to one end of the couch.  "Would ya mind coming out here and sitting down and explaining precisely why that is?" he asked, patiently, and then as an afterthought, added, "Bring an ashtray if you smoke in here at all."

The only two ashtrays in the apartment were in the bathroom and the bedroom, where she spent the most time when she was home, so she grabbed a glass bowl from the sink instead and ignored the remnants of cereal that were stuck to it.  She knew Spike would, too.  Faye made her way to the couch and flopped down, setting the bowl in between them on the unused cushion.  The man opposite her wasted no time in lighting up. 

"Well?" he asked, not looking at her.

"…You were dead," was all she could muster right off the bat, which drew another heavy sigh from Spike, and a flick into the makeshift ashtray. 

"I thought we went over that one before," he replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose. 

"Well, it doesn't just go away because we talked about it once, damnit!" she snapped, and then fell into reticent silence again, trying to nail down one of her myriad thoughts and put it into a sentence.  Half of the myriad thoughts weren't really conversation-worthy, since they would probably cause Spike to never speak to her again.  "It's hard to think that every day for the last two years that we thought you were dead, you were actually alive somewhere and not letting us know, you fuckface."

His jaw clicked.  "I thought we went over that one before, too."  Her living room was starting to become oppressively smoky and he took initiative and stood, pulling the cord for the ceiling fan.  At least his eyes would stop burning from the smoke, then. 

Faye opened her mouth to grind out angry words about him not understanding, but then decided to let it drop.  He obviously wasn't ever going to see what had been done wrong in the situation, so it was best to just forget about it and move on.  "Whatever.  I'm just still not sure where I stand on having you sitting here, on my couch, like nothing ever happened."

Spike was very quiet, very still.  He seemed…hurt, somehow.  "You wish I'd never come back at all, huh?  That would've been easier to deal with, right?" he asked, sticking his cigarette in his mouth and leaving it there, folding his hands together on his stomach.

She once again had to pause to think.  As ridiculous as it might have been by that point, she still didn't want him to think that she didn't want him around.  Part of her was trying to endear herself again, make herself semi-tolerable to him, and that part of her knew that annoying him and pushing him away certainly wasn't any way to go about it.  However, Faye knew that she had to formulate at least some sort of response pretty quickly, lest he misinterpret her silence.

"No, that's not it," she replied finally, and then looked around her, surveying her surroundings.  She needed to get off the topic of him for a bit.  "Okay, just because I have a normal job and a normal apartment doesn't mean that I feel normal.  If you think about it…there isn't a damn thing that's even halfway normal about me."

"You've got two eyes and a nose and mouth like everyone else," Spike commented, drolly.  "You've also got two legs, and two arms, and—"

"—I'm secretly in my fifties?" she cut in, looking over at Spike with her eyebrows arched.  He simply looked at her and shrugged, removing his cigarette from his mouth.

"Not really.  If you hadn't been frozen you'd be in your fifties.  You're only—what, almost thirty or something?"

Faye couldn't stop herself from blanching and looking offended.  She leaned away from Spike with a slight sniff.  "Almost thirty?  Jesus!  I'm twenty-five!  God, you say it as if I look like I'm almost thirty."  She huffed and only looked over at him quickly to filch his cigarette for a puff.  "The thing is that I feel like I'm fifty.  I feel like Poker Alice.  I feel like the bounty hunter.  I know that people know that something's funny with me.  I mean, isn't it obvious?  My reflexes are just a tad too fast for someone who's a waitress by profession, and I know that people know that something's up when they sit down to a card game with me."

Spike looked amused.  "They know something's up?  As in the ace up your sleeve?"

She got half of a chuckle out of that comment; even if there wasn't an ace up her sleeve, she had mastered the art of rigging a deck and counting cards—she won, even when she wasn't cheating in the extreme.  "Me and some of the girls from work play cards sometimes.  I remember the first time we sat down to play, I dealt, and when I was finished and looked up, everyone was just kind of like, 'holy shit'.  I'd let the mild-mannered Faye mask slip too much."

A snicker issued forth from the man next to her, and he pinched his cigarette back, only to take one more drag and then kill it in the cereal bowl.  "You'll adapt," he said simply, once again folding his hands over his stomach, unconsciously laying them over the jagged scar that ran across his abdomen.  "You're a gypsy.  You've got to blend somehow.  And while all this equivalent of teenage awkwardness in the real world is fascinating, Faye," he said, picking at a button on his shirt, "I entirely fail to see what it's all got to do with moi."

Faye frowned and her mind stumbled.  Damnit.  She thought she'd effectively steered him away from the topic of him, but Spike was insufferably persistent when he wanted to be.  Uh, well, it's because to tell the truth, Spike dear, I'm crazy in love with you.  Oh dear, I have to run to the powder room.  Want me to get you anything while I'm up? 

Faye pictured herself saying something along those lines to Spike, and Spike taking a small amount of time to process it…and then getting up and walking out without a word.

She realized that it was going to be close to impossible to explain why he had such an impact on her world without either admitting how she felt or sounding completely infantile.  She was going to have to opt for the infantile option.

"In case you hadn't noticed, things went downhill after you left," she said, sourly, knowing she sounded very stupid for blaming it all on him.  "We all could have stayed on the Bebop forever and did what we did—but no, you had to up and leave, and I had to start a new life."

"I refuse to believe that your life was so centered around me," he said dismissively, and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.  "Oops!  So sorry that you let your life fall to shit because mine did," he chirped sarcastically, which is what Faye herself probably would have done if someone had just blamed the rotten nature of their life on her.  Having Spike treat her like she was thirteen was better than having Spike avoid her out of awkwardness for the rest of her life, though.

In the meantime, she'd just go quietly nuts, if anyone had been wondering.

"Yeah, well, whatever," she muttered, not really wanting to develop the semi-lie any further.  Inside she felt a small pang of guilt because sometimes she had grumbled to herself—if only the damn lunkhead hadn't left and died—and there she was, using it as an excuse. 

"The point is, Faye," he said suddenly in a tone that sounded as if she had just asked him a question, "you've got to move on.  You're only uncomfortable in life because you're making yourself uncomfortable.  If being your average, run-of-the-mill hips-lips-and-tits diner waitress doesn't toot your horn, then go back to bounty hunting.  And if that doesn't blow the horn either, then go…study botany or something.  Or become a tele-evangelist.  Or become a Girl Scout troop leader.  Or somethingAnything.  Just stop moping about how your current life sucks, because whining about it and trying to blame it on me or on Poker Alice or on whatever isn't making it any better.  Who needs words when you've got action, right?" 

"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose," Faye commented, quietly.  "Janis Joplin said that."
"Who?" Spike asked, and then shook his head, blinking.  "Nevermind.  It's true.  It's never too late to change.  Wanna wallow in the past?  Fine, go ahead.  Do it, be my guest.  Just don't come dragging it around my feet.  Living in the past doesn't bring you anything—I'd like to think that I'm somewhat of the authority on this particular subject—and thinking about it forever certainly doesn't do anything either.  I got no time for sorrow in my life anymore, woman."

Faye was still reeling from Spike's confusion about Janis Joplin, but then remembered that half of the people in the solar system didn't bother with old Earth music because…well, Earth was considered kind of obsolete.  She made a mental note to play Janis for Spike sometime; she seemed like she'd be right up Spike's alley. 

"Do whatever it is you women do when you decide you want to make a giant overhaul in your lives," Spike went on, lighting up another cigarette, and blowing the smoke out his nose like a dragon.  "Buy yourself a new wardrobe, or dye your hair, or something.  Julia always opted for the buying herself a new wardrobe option.  She never could decide whether she wanted to look like the cute little girl next door or the emo mod rock chick who hung out in art galleries."  He blinked.  "But whatever.  That's the extent of my knowledge of women.  You're always wanting to change.  But your first step is always something stupid and superficial like changing your hair or your car or your clothes.  One of the last things that Julia did before she disappeared into the void was buying that damned stupid car of hers.  It guzzled gas and was breaking down every other week—so old, you see.  Vintage parts, extremely hard to get."
He blinked again, and sighed.  "Sorry.  I'm not meaning to talk about her so much.  She's the only woman I really ever knew, so I'm kind of lump-summing my info, here.  I guess all I'm saying is…don't be like Julia."

Faye's heart leapt into her throat, fell down into her stomach, and then leapt back to its resting spot.  Did he just say what I thought he said?

"Jules thought she could change her life by running from it and changing dumb little things instead of standing her ground and facing the facts.  I tried that for a while too, and once again… look at where it got us.  It got her killed, and it got me half-killed."

Faye swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.  "That's a different situation."

"Of course it is," Spike replied.  "No one's going to try to kill you because you're feeling like a sore thumb in your new life.  It's just—"

Suddenly he stopped talking, and kind of threw his hands up, and then said no more for a few seconds.  "I don't know.  Take it any which way you want.  I don't like to dispense advice; it makes me feel like I'm talking circles around myself.  Makes me feel hypocritical, a lot.  I especially don't like dispensing advice to someone whom I feel is sharp enough to know better," he said pointedly, looking at her with an eyebrow raised.  "You're a bright kid.  You'll get it figured out eventually." 

She felt like he should have been giving her a small punch on the side of the face and drawling something like, "You're alright, kid," with the way he sounded.  She didn't like to receive advice from him as much as he didn't like to give it; somehow Faye always walked away from it feeling very young and immature.  Maybe it was because that even for all the stupid things she had known Spike to do, he was no fool.  One could learn a lot from him, if they learned to filter out the bullshit and read between the lines.

She tried to imagine Spike as a father, dolling out life lessons and advice to a smaller version of himself; half of his hair grey and a cigarette hanging from his lips. 

"When you go grey," she said suddenly, curious, "do you think it'll be gradual or you'll just wake up one day and have half a head of grey hair?"

He laughed, killing yet another spent cigarette over the bowl, gnashing it out with his thumb and his forefinger, apparently not bothered by the small ember.  "Wake up one day and have half a head of grey hair," he said, smoke coming out of his mouth in little spurts as he spoke.  He took a second after he spoke to exhale and force the last little bit out.  "Everything about me has to be as dramatic as possible, right?  I couldn't possibly get any sillier looking unless I grew a second head.  Half a head of grey hair wouldn't be so bad.  Grey hair is dead sexy."

She snorted a bit of laughter, incredulous.  "Just keep telling yourself that, old man."

Miraculously, when they knew no one was looking, Spike and Faye actually got along without many hitches.  There were still problems; there would always be problems—that was just what happened when two people with strong wills and smart mouths got together.  Only a few times in the entire history of their relationship had they actually dropped the bullshit long enough to be able to spend some semi-bonding time.  That afternoon was one more time added to the short list.

Once Spike stopped being an asshole who slung insults constantly and Faye stopped being the World's Best Actress who was too tough for her own good, they actually managed to get along pretty well.

Alcohol helped, too.  They weren't drunk, but they weren't sober either.  Faye's cat sat on Spike's stomach, purring against his scar as he lay on Faye's couch (which was too small for him, as with most couches, his feet hung off the edge).  Faye sat on the floor, cigarette burning in one hand and a pile of discarded CD cases next to her.

"Or, how about this one?" she asked of him, over the music, reading intently from a CD booklet.  "'Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose'," she intoned importantly, pausing afterwards to take a small swig out of a bottle of vodka that she'd brought into the living room.

Spike was busy petting his cat-alter-ego, and turning his clothing into a cat's hair nest.  He'd decided not too long ago that he'd had enough of the good old firewater for the time being; his extremities were beginning to tingle fuzzily with that familiar inebriated feeling, and he was starting too think too hard about things that really didn't make any sense when he really thought about them.  That was one of the sure signs that he'd had enough to drink, as far as he was concerned.  "I don't know if that one's true or not," he answered after a few moments, and then tried to pick out some cat hair that had magically found its way into his mouth.

"Why not?" Faye asked him, as if he'd just said he didn't believe in Jesus or something like that. 

Spike mulled over this for a moment.  In all honesty, the new combination of Janis Joplin and alcohol was a little much for him.  It wasn't that Spike didn't like her, in fact, he was pleasantly surprised that Faye even listened to music that was halfway worth listening to.  He liked Joplin's voice—just gritty enough to be kind of ugly, but just fascinating enough to be listen-worthy.  He figured it was kind of like him.  "Because your freedom is everything.  If you still have your freedom, then you still have that to lose.  You don't respect your freedom until you don't have it anymore, I guess."

"Oh."  Faye didn't seem to have any thoughts on that particular subject, which kind of irked Spike.  She always asked him the questions but never seemed to have anything to add or any thoughts of her own.  Spike suspected she did, in fact, he knew she had her own opinions about everything she asked him about, but he realized that for whatever reason she considered him a wellspring of some sort of bizarre genius, and was soaking up all his answers like a dry washcloth in water. 

He wasn't an idiot.  He had realized long ago that Faye looked up to him a tad more than was seemly for a relationship of their type.  He had always figured the best thing he could do was not let on that he'd figured it out, and just be as big of an ass as possible.  She'd lose interest in him eventually or grow out of her crush or whatever, and all the better for her.  Spike thought that he should carry around disclaimers in his pockets so that whenever he caught a girl staring at him he could pull one out and hand it to her, hopefully making her stop staring and walk down the street in the other direction as fast as humanly possible.  It would go something like this (he'd actually written it up one night while rollickingly drunk, but lost it):

'WARNING: The substance (hereafter referred to as one 'Spike Spiegel') you are currently viewing with your eyes/hearing with your ears/pondering with your brain is, in fact, highly corrosive, volatile, and has a criminal record.  Spike Spiegel drinks straight from the carton, does not clean up after himself, and will eat you out of house and home.  Spike Spiegel has killed people, will kill people, and sees no reason to stop killing people anytime soon.  All major Syndicates across the galaxy know Spike Spiegel's name and either fear him or want him dead.  Spike Spiegel smokes enough to cause cancer in lab rats by simply touching them, drinks enough alcohol to breathe fire without matches, and knows enough swear words to offend even pirates.  Spike Spiegel in many cases believes that there is absolutely nothing wrong with lying, cheating, stealing, or committing acts of violence.  Spike Spiegel is going on thirty, believes he's still fifteen, and has never had a college education, and more than likely never will get one.  Spike Spiegel does not want kids anytime soon, if ever, he does not want a mother-in-law, and believes in doing his laundry approximately once a month.  This product, Spike Spiegel, is not recommended to ANYONE.'

Spike wished he'd given a copy of Faye that when she first met him.  However, Spike knew that if Faye also had a disclaimer, hers would go something like this:

'WARNING: The substance (hereafter referred to as one 'Faye Valentine') you are currently ogling with your eyes/semi-listening to with your ears/fantasizing about with your deep, dark brain is, in fact, highly crooked, completely unstable, and has a bounty on its head.  Faye Valentine will drink straight from cartons and put it back empty, then claim she never drank it, will make messes and then claim she did not make them, and will steal all your food and then claim that she didn't.  Faye Valentine has cheated people, will cheat people, and furthermore loves to cheat people.  Every casino in the galaxy knows Faye Valentine's face and sends out their entire security force the moment she walks in the door (no matter which one).  Faye Valentine smokes enough to go through several of your packs a day, drinks enough alcohol to carry a proof label of her own, and habitually lies…whether or not she wants to.  Keep staring; that's exactly what she wants you to do, but don't be surprised when you feel a gun pressed into your side.  Faye Valentine will not tell you her real age; you don't want to know it.  Faye Valentine would not cook you dinner, nor would she do your laundry, nor would she fit in well at a family dinner.  This product, Faye Valentine, is not recommended to ANYONE.'

Spike watched Faye sitting there in the middle of her living room reading the lyrics out of the CD booklet to herself, completely immersed in her bottle and her musical words of wisdom, her cigarette burning so low it was threatening to burn her.  For once she seemed as if she'd forgotten that Spike was even there. 

Sometimes, oddly enough, Spike regretted that he hadn't met Faye earlier in his lifetime.  She was just as bad as he was; at one point in time, they might've made a nice, kind of fucked-up couple.  There was too much between them now, he feared (well, not feared, but felt); too much time, too much pain, too much history.

Plus he had the feeling that they were both too jaded to fall in love again—well, he with her, and she too hurt to completely trust anyone…regardless of how she felt about them.  They'd both erected completely solid walls around themselves, and Spike knew that even though yeah, he guessed he'd call Faye his friend and she'd call him hers, they weren't and never would be that close, at all.  Their walls were too thick.

And that's why Spike knew he had to quit drinking, when he started drinking just enough to make him look across the living room at the chain-smoking, quick-tongued, gypsy-queen-waitress-with-a-Glock and think that if he were smart, he'd be sleeping with her, at the very least. 

But he knew that was wrong, very wrong.  It would bring their whole little world crashing down in on itself; it'd drive him mad and it'd probably kill Faye.  He could not make himself feel something more than what he felt for her, no matter whether or not he wanted to, just like she couldn't make herself stop looking at him like he was Jesus Resurrected—and yes, he knew that look in her eye.  It was more than a crush.  The little voice in the back of his head told him that if he kept telling himself that it was just some cute little big-brother infatuation that she had with him, then that's all it would be. 

He was to Faye as Julia had been to him—so close, but somehow always magically out of reach.  Because, somehow, deep down, he'd always known—

--Christ, now he really was thinking too much, and was kind of vaguely glad that Faye had wandered off into the kitchen for something—

--that Julia loved him, but not as much as she loved Vicious.  For whatever reason.  She'd been driven to Spike out of necessity, out of the hurt that bloomed within her when Vicious started to look less at her and more at his work and the Syndicate.  When he turned cold and distant to even her, she sought comfort somewhere else.  Spike.  And as much as he lied to himself and tried to tell himself that someday, someday he'd win her over to his team completely, when he looked in her eyes he saw the rampant sadness that said she knew that he knew that if things were to suddenly go sunny-side-up with Vicious that she'd leave him heartbroken because she had to.  Julia couldn't lie to herself about her emotions anymore than Spike could, or Faye could, or anyone with a conscious could. 

And yet, despite his knowledge about Julia, Spike kept right on loving her, living with the tiny hope that she'd completely pick him, that one day things would be alright, doing it all because it felt good right then, never mind how bad it would hurt later on down the road.  Just like Vicious and he had kept their little feud going on for way longer than it needed to go on, lending a little purpose to two lives that had otherwise lost a majority of it.  Just like Faye could scream and holler and call him Lunkhead and try her damndest to convince herself that he really wasn't worth her time, but couldn't keep that goofy light out of her eyes whenever she looked at him and desperately tried to hide that goofy light.

Human beings were sick, masochistic creatures, Spike decided.  And then Faye walked back into the living room, smoking another cigarette, sipping from the bottle of vodka.  She was hurtling towards drunkenness. 

"So, you never explained," she began, cigarette dangling from her lips, "what this grand plan you have is.  So spill."

Spike really regretted not meeting Faye earlier in life.  He really regretted that their walls were too high and wide for him to really get to know the woman behind the mask.  Crazy, crazy drunk thinking. 

"Highway robbery," he commented lazily, and started laughing.  Faye began to laugh too, probably only because she was pleasantly drunk and Spike had a laugh like a goon.  Then she calmed down. 

"No, but seriously," she giggled, ashing her cigarette on the carpet without a care.  "Spill."

Spike wiped at something in his eye, a tear of mirth?  "I told you.  Highway robbery.  Mint robbery, to be more precise."  He began to snicker about it again even as Faye gave him a 'You Must Be Crazy Or Drunk And God Help Me, I Can't Tell Which One' look.  "Aw, c'mon.  It isn't any less serious than swindling casinos out of thousands of dollars of their money," he added, upon noting that the look seemed to be stuck on Faye's face.

"Jesus," she murmured, sticking her cigarette between her lips.  "Yeah, it is!  There's a whole hell of a lot of difference between a casino and a mint, Spike.  One's government operated.  One carries a lot bigger penalty for knocking over."

Spike sighed and launched into his explanation; the Olmo Nero, the Sombras, everything.  And for good measure, he tacked on his statement about getting tired of being the fuckee, it was about time that he was the fucker.  Faye just huffed a little and shook her head, cigarette bobbing while she pursed and unpursed her lips. 

"You're nuts," she said.  "What do I have to do with all of this?"

"Whaddya think?" Spike asked.  "That I want you to make sandwiches for the picnic?  Faye, it isn't exactly a one man operation.  It's a one man, one half-man half-machine, one sneaky woman, and one strange kid operation.  You're inherently dishonest enough to do it and semi-trustworthy enough to be down with it." 

"Only semi-trustworthy?" she sniffed, putting her hand on her hip and jutting it to the side slightly; all curves and Spike with no brakes.  If there was one thing that Spike wished he could thank Faye for, it was all the years of decent eye-candy.  Her personality may have been tragically flawed, but her body was tragically perfect.  "And good luck on finding Edward.  That kid finds you when and where she wants to."

"So I've heard," Spike replied, trying not to focus on the way Faye's skirt followed the lines of her legs.  Note to Spike, he thought to himself, avoid drinking around Faye alone in the future.

"Ugh, oh, fine," Faye groused, smashing her cigarette in the bowl near Spike, and taking a long swig of the bottle before offering it to him.  Against his better judgement, he took it from her.  "Ms. Inherently Dishonest But Staight Enough or whatever will join you in your little escapade.  But if she ends up in jail, someone's head is going to roll."

"There will be no head rolling," Spike said, holding the bottle to his lips.  "Just a whole lot of rolling in money."